Data from the Labor Department published Friday showed the US economy added 178,000 jobs in March after February's revised loss of 133,000. In March, the unemployment rate edged down to 4.3%.

On its face, that looks like a sharp turnaround. In context, it looks more like another violent swing in a labor market that has become unusually hard to read. And that whiplash nature of the labor market is the real story in the economy right now.

For 10 straight months, monthly job growth has alternated between positive and negative. The past three months alone went from a gain of 160,000 to a loss of 133,000 to a gain of 178,000.

Each report feels huge. Each report also says less on its own.

If the current swing in monthly job gains and losses were a stock chart, technicians might call the green trend lines on the chart above a broadening megaphone pattern: wider swings, more disagreement, less clarity.

And while technical analysis doesn't work with economic data, that framing isn't a bad way to think about the labor market. The monthly data swings are becoming more extreme, even as the longer-term trend continues to weaken.