April Jobs Report

The April jobs report came out this morning. The economy added 244,000 jobs last month. For March, the jobs gain was revised higher to 221,000.

As has been the case for several months, all of the increase came from private employers, which added another 268,000 jobs last month on top of the revised 231,000 in March, the monthly report said. Results of the previous two months were revised to show an additional 46,000 jobs were added.

Governments, struggling to balance budgets as they deal with shrinking revenues and growing deficits, cut 24,000 jobs last month. Most of the drop came at the local level, where 14,000 jobs were lost in April after a decline of 15,000 in March.

April’s numbers exceeded the forecasts of analysts, who had expected a gain of 185,000 jobs over all, with the change in private payrolls of 200,000. The uptick in the unemployment rate that came even as employers were adding jobs was an indication that more people were entering the work force as hopes for hiring increased.

The job market peaked in April 2000, so let’s see what’s changed over the last 11 years. The non-institutional population has grown by 27.13 million. The civilian labor force has increased by 10.67 million. That’s a participation rate at the margin of less than 40%. A typical number is close to two-thirds.

Over the last 11 years, the number of employed Americans has grown by 2.40 million and the number of unemployed has grown by 8.27 million. That’s a marginal unemployment rate of 77%.

If the economy were employing people at the same rate as April 2000, there would be 15.16 million more jobs today.

Posted by on May 6th, 2011 at 9:30 am


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