joining us now to talk about what it means for the markets and the economy, ken volpert at vanguard who he oversees $225 million in bond funds, and michelle girard, senior economist at rbs. thank you for joining us today. >> hi. >> michelle, what did this jobs report tell you about the economy? >> it didn't really advance the ball much. it really came in very much as expected, but i see good news in the sense that the pace of job losses are waning. private jobs were down 198,000. that's the smallest drop in private sector employment that we've seen since before the lehman bankruptcy last fall. we're making progress. there are early hints here that we are getting some stabilization even in the labor market. >> ken, what about you? i know you were looking for a smaller jobs loss number. >> yeah. we were looking for something under 200, but this 216 was a good number. you know, it definitely was better than what the market was expecting, and they did revise last month's number worse than previously expected, so when you look at the change actually from month to month it's actually a fairly