The unemployment rate held steady in March’s Employment Situation Report. On a seasonally adjusted basis, 162,000 jobs were added. On an unadjusted basis, 843,000 jobs were added. The Bloomberg consensus range for the adjusted number was 75,000 to 300,000. From the report:
Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in March, and the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Temporary help services and health care continued to add jobs over the month. Employment in federal government also rose, reflecting the hiring of temporary workers for Census 2010. Employment continued to decline in financial activities and in information.
In March, the number of unemployed persons was little changed at 15.0 million, and the unemployment rate remained at 9.7 percent.
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The number of persons working part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased to 9.1 million in March. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.
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Temporary help services added 40,000 jobs in March. Since September 2009, temporary help services employment has risen by 313,000.
Employment in health care continued to increase in March (27,000), with the largest gains occurring in ambulatory health care services (16,000) and in nursing and residential care facilities (9,000).
In March, employment in mining increased by 8,000. Monthly job gains in mining have averaged 6,000 over the past 5 months.
Employment in federal government was up over the month, reflecting the hiring of 48,000 temporary workers for the decennial census.
Manufacturing employment continued to trend up in March (17,000); the industry has added 45,000 jobs in the first 3 months of 2010. Over the month, job gains were concentrated in fabricated metal products (9,000) and in machinery (6,000).
Employment in construction held steady (15,000) in March. The industry had lost an average of 72,000 jobs per month in the prior 12 months.
Over the month, employment changed little in transportation and warehousing, leisure and hospitality, retail trade, and wholesale trade.
In March, financial activities shed 21,000 jobs, with the largest losses occurring in insurance carriers and related activities (-9,000). Employment in the information industry decreased by 12,000.
Once again, these numbers are seasonally adjusted, so they are more useful for spotting trends than for actually determining where hiring has taken place. In general, hiring of actual people was better than the seasonally adjusted numbers because March is a negative adjustment month (required to smooth out the job losses that occur in January when holiday seasonal workers lose their jobs by the hundreds of thousands).
The census hiring was only about 48,000 new jobs, not seasonally adjusted. That puts a total of 87,000 census workers on the current payroll. Looking at past hiring data (current data there as well, pdf warning), we’d actually anticipate the biggest jump in May. I have read that there would be a large jump in March/April. Given that the “large jump” should measure in the hundreds of thousands, March definitely didn’t qualify. Apologies. As I just posted, the census hiring is extremely short lived. It may provide huge numbers for May (still hoping a bit for April), but the jobs will disappear just as quickly.
The alternative measures of labor underutilization can be found in table A-15. U-6, the broadest measure of unemployment, crept up from 16.8% to 16.9% (unadjusted, it decreased from 17.9% to 17.5%). This is often cited as the “real” unemployment rate.
Pay raises weren’t in the picture this month:
In March, average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 2 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $22.47, following a 4-cent gain in February. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have risen by 1.8 percent. In March, average hourly earnings of private production and nonsupervisory employees fell by 2 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $18.90.
And there were some revisions, though the January revision is nicer than February (note, this is still seasonally adjusted, jobs were shed by the hundreds of thousands in January unadjusted):
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for January was revised from -26,000 to +14,000, and the change for February was revised from -36,000 to -14,000
This was a great report. Even though the unemployment rate didn’t change (and we’ll need about 180,000 jobs a month just to hold that rate steady), it was the first positive jobs number released before revisions.
