From the Bureau of Labor Statistics today:
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 165,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services, food services and drinking places, retail trade, and health care.
Also, as more data has come in, the BLS has made significant upward revisions for February and March:
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for February was revised from +268,000 to +332,000, and the change for March was revised from +88,000 to +138,000. With these revisions, employment gains in February and March combined were 114,000 higher than previously reported.
This was a decent report — and quite a bit better than I was expecting.
The numbers here are consistent with a slowly but steadily growing economy.
The important measure of U-6 Employment (which includes 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) climbed slightly to a seasonally adjusted 13.9 percent in April. U-6 was 14.5 percent in April 2012.
But let me also include this updated graph from Calculated Risk that shows job losses and recoveries after every post-WW II recession. Here you can see just how deep the job losses were during and for a while after the 2007-2009 recession. We have a long way to go to get back to where we were.