Friday, April 6, 2012

The March Jobs Report

The new unemployment figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning were mildly disappointing: After two straight months in which the economy added more than 200,000 jobs, we gained just 120,000 more jobs in March. Still, that was enough to drive the overall unemployment rate down by a percentage point, from 8.3 percent to 8.2 percent.

Most of the employment categories were little changed from February. Perhaps the most encouraging change was in the category of involuntary part-time workers - people who are working part-time, but want to work full-time. The number of people in that group fell by 400,000. The other bit of good news is that both January and February's number of new jobs was revised upward: January went from 275,000 to 284,000, and February went from 227,000 to 240,000.

The sectors that added the most jobs in March included manufacturing, up by 37,000; food services and drinking places, also up by 37,000; professional and business services, up by 31,000; and health care, up 26,000. The sector shedding the most jobs was general merchandise stores; that area lost 32,000 jobs on the month.

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