Some of those huge Texas electricity bills were a mistake?

“It’s not just that we almost added 400,000 jobs. It’s that we managed to add that many jobs despite the great freeze,” said Christopher Low, chief economist at FHN Financial, “which caused construction employment to fall, manufacturing employment gains were probably smaller than they would have been. In fact, even state and local government employment was down because teachers couldn’t come in to work in parts of the South.” Good jobs numbers can fuel inflation and bond market concerns, as Treasury yields have continued to rise. But also fueling concerns, Low said, is the fact that Fed Chair Jerome Powell did not say the central bank would stop yields from rising, just that it would monitor and take action on “disorderly” market conditions.

Marketplace’s Nova Safo has more.