The Employment Surge

Remember when the good news was that we had lost fewer jobs than we had the month before? March's jobless report blew that out of the water, with payrolls rising by 162,000 positions, the most in three years. It was the highest number of jobs created since a good six months before the recession officially started.

Even that understates the good news a bit. When the government released the March figures, it also revised the January and February numbers upward as well. All told, the new employment numbers added 224,000 jobs to the numbers we thought we had.

Here at home, the unemployment rate in Somerset County ticked upward, from 7.9 percent to 8.1 percent. Statewide, the number of New Jerseyans filing for unemployment dropped to its lowest level since July 2008, although the jobless rate is still above the national average at 10.3 percent.

The bad news? Of the 162,000 new jobs, 48,000 of them were filled by newly hired census workers. Those really belong in the category of full-time but temporary positions.