March unemployment data

[CARLHAYDEN]

Some data emerging from the data (all of which has yet to be released).

The number of unemployed (seasonally adjusted) went up from 14,871,000 in February to 15,005,000 in March (LNS13000000).

The number of person unemployed for 27 weeks or longer (seasonally adjusted) went up from 6,133,000 in February to 6,547,000 in March (LNS 13008636).

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

WASHINGTON — The nation's economy posted its largest job gain in three years in March, while the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent for the third straight month.

The increase in payrolls is the latest sign that the economic recovery is gaining momentum and healing in the job market is beginning. Still, the healing is likely to be slow, and most economists don't expect new hiring to be fast enough this year to rapidly reduce the unemployment rate.

The Labor Department said employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the most since the recession began but below analysts' expectations of 190,000. The total includes 48,000 temporary workers hired for the U.S. Census, also fewer than many economists forecast.

Private employers added 123,000 jobs, the most since May 2007.

"It's just the beginning of a rise in private hiring that will help sustain the recovery," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. "They're not big numbers, but they're welcome numbers."

Still, there are 15 million Americans out of work, roughly double the total before the recession began in December 2007. More Americans entered the work force last month, which prevented the increase in jobs from reducing the unemployment rate.

The economy likely began recovering in the middle of last year, but is only now showing modest job gains.

"It is still disappointing that it took roughly nine months before we started to see any meaningful rebound" in jobs, Paul Ashworth, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

The stock market is closed Friday. Interest rates rose in the bond market after the report. Investors often sell Treasurys and favor riskier assets like stocks and commodities when the economy is improving.

Manufacturers added 17,000 jobs, the third straight month of gains. Temporary help services added 40,000, while health care added 37,000. Leisure and hospitality added 22,000.

Even the beleaguered construction industry added 15,000 positions, though that likely reflects a rebound from February, when major snowstorms may have kept many construction workers off payrolls.

The average work week increased to 34 hours from 33.9, a positive sign. Most employers are likely to work current employees longer before they hire new workers.

The department also revised January's job total to show a gain of 14,000, up from a previously reported loss of 26,000. February's job numbers were also revised higher by 22,000 to show a loss of 14,000. The economy has now added jobs in three separate months since the recession began.

Still, more Americans said they were working part-time even though they preferred full-time work. When they and discouraged workers who have given up searching for jobs are included, the "underemployment" rate ticked up to 16.9 percent from 16.8 percent.

And average hourly earnings fell by two cents to $22.47. That shows that high unemployment is enabling companies to hold down wages. Average weekly earnings rose by about $3 to $629.37, partly reflecting the longer work week.

In a stark illustration of how hard it remains for many people to find jobs, the number of those out of work for six months or longer increased to 6.5 million, a record high.

More than 44 percent of those out of work are long-term unemployed, also a record.

"For those laid off, unemployment is stretching longer and longer and putting severe distress on families," said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit advocacy group.

Still, Friday's jobs report follows positive data earlier this week that showed consumers are increasing their spending and manufacturing activity is growing at its fastest pace in more than five years. Economists are increasingly confident that the nation will avoid a "double-dip" recession, in which growth slows after a short burst at the end of last year.

"The stars are starting to align here," said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.

The economy is likely to expand at a roughly 3 percent pace in the current January-to-March quarter, analysts predict. That's roughly half the 5.6 percent pace seen in the final quarter of last year.

Normally, growth in the 3 percent range would be considered respectable. But the nation is emerging from the worst recession since the 1930s. Growth needs to be in the 5 percent range or higher to quickly drive down the unemployment rate. Both the Federal Reserve and Obama administration expect joblessness will remain above 9 percent through the end of this year.

[Lief 🗽]

So we've turned the corner. Good news.

[CARLHAYDEN]

IT'S OBAMA'S ECONOMY.

Thank you!

Oh, and I neglected to mention two other salient facts:

First, the expectations were for between 190,000 and 200,000 jobs to be added, and

Second, approximately 30% of the jobs were temporary census jobs.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

Finally, some recovery

[Bo]

Good news.

[Beet]

A pyrrhic victory.

While it shows that the government interventions of late 08/early 09 (much of the credit for which goes to Bush and Paulson) worked, a few things have to be kept into account

1) In the 1990s, an average of 225,000 jobs were created each month with a workforce that was significantly smaller. The financial sector was also smaller. And the 1990s were not by any means an anomaly for postwar decades. 125,000 jobs have to be created each month just to keep up with the natural growth in the workfoce-- although that could begin to tape off in the next decade as more baby boomers retire.

2) The bailouts which got us to today's numbers were so unpopular that it's questionable whether they would be repeated (or could be). Which means that the economy must be reformed in a fundamentally new direction so that TBTF never happens again. Or at least not in as long a time as can possibly be helped.

3) This reform has not happened.

The Obama administration has spent all of its political capital and more on the health care debate. Glass Steagall needs to be brought back, the Volcker rule implemented, the big banks broken up, derivatives to be forced onto the open in exchanges, executive compensation massively reformed, an independent consumer protection agency formed and headed by Elizabeth Warren, and the people most responsible for the bad decisions fully investigated and prosecuted to the full wherever they broke the law.

To do this, the independent power of bad lobbying and Wall Street must be broken. Campaigns must be publically funded, much harsher restrictions must be put on lobbying and on jumping between the regulated and regulator. There must be much more openness in government. This is not happening.

The partisan battles that you see every day are bread and circuses. Genuine popular outrage has been co-opted, first by the 'tea party', which had some claim to authenticity at one point, now by the GOP.

After all of this, the economy needs to be restructured through industrial policy focusing on technology, health care, energy and other leading or exportable sectors, the American workforce reeducated, and the entire paradigm that we think about economics changed so that "GDP" and the stock market are not the main measures of wealth and we are not so dependent on finance and debt.

Just as I was typing this, and ad came on TV for a product advertising "no interest for 4 years". This shows that the mentality has not shifted.

Obama is not addressing any of this. His apparently awareness of these issues is like Teresa Wright's character in Shadow of a Doubt, because that is what he has. A shadow of a doubt that the "big thinker" is not thinking big enough, and has not been thinking big enough since January 2009.

We have prevented an epic cataclysm [edit: for now] that would have had historic social repercussions. But we are only about 20 percent of the way there. The above list will take decades to complete but unless we have make substantial progress on these financial and economic transformations, a full response to the crisis is nowhere close.

[opebo]

Beet, you have some ambitious goals there.  Of course none of that stuff can be done.

In fact of course all that needs to be done is redistribution, but alas that is just as unlikely as your strange prescriptions.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

A pyrrhic victory.

While it shows that the government interventions of late 08/early 09 (much of the credit for which goes to Bush and Paulson) worked

yeah, Paulson/BenB might have been late to wake up, but, thankfullly, they did wake up.  most of the TARP money has bene paid back and we've had 3 straight quarters of growth...so, overall, we should be counting our blessings.  Credit needs also to be given to the Dems in the House and Senate for their willingness to act quickly in late 2008.

Of course, the attention needs to be on preventing the next crisis, but the actions of late 2008 were excellent, overall, I'd give them an F prior to waking up and an A- since waking up.

[MK]

They count people working at the local Micky D's as employed, and don't forget the 4 month temp jobs.   The real number is well over 12%.

Also apparently uncle sam is having a hard time actually finding enough workers with skills to do the census jobs.