According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 88,000 jobs in March. The unemployment rate is 7.6 percent. Both these numbers are adjusted for ordinary seasonal trends.
This appears to be a weak report, indicating continued economic expansion but at a considerably slower pace than we would like to see given the severity of the 2007-2009 recession, from which we are still recovering.
Yes, the unemployment rate declined slightly, but that was primarily because 496,000 workers left the labor force.
On the other hand, we actually added 759,000 jobs in March — that’s the real number, not seasonally adjusted. But typically March is a strong month for job growth, so that pales beside normal expectations.
There’s no doubt that these jobs numbers are being restrained by the sequester, which has resulted and will result in direct job losses, especially for various types of independent contractors who work on federal facilities. Sequestration’s widespread furloughs are also impacting consumer spending, especially in areas with high concentrations of federal employees and large federal facilities. The reduction in consumer spending will bleed through those local and regional economies, restraining employment growth for a wide variety of sectors.
U-6 unemployment, which measures “Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force,” fell to 13.8 percent last month from 14.3 percent in February — a big drop.
