Juan Padilla, left, a district manager at Frito Lay, talks with job seeker William Garcia during the National Society for Hispanic Professionals Chicago bilingual job fair at Navy Pier in mid-March. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
By Don Lee | The American economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the biggest burst of
hiring in three years, the Labor Department said Friday. The
unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent, the level it has been for
the last three months.
The March job gains, which were boosted by temporary hiring for the
census, marked the biggest one-month increase since 239,000 jobs were
generated in March 2007. The latest gain was slightly lower than what
many economists had been forecasting, but the government also revised
up the count of payrolls for the first two months of the year.
It said the economy created 14,000 jobs in January, instead of losing 26,000 as previously reported. And the losses in February were shaved by more than half to 14,000.
The news of the hiring spurt last month will be welcomed by the 15 million jobless American workers — it was only the third time the economy added jobs in the last 27 months. But the latest report somewhat overstated the strength of a slowly recovering labor market.
About 30 percent of the payroll increases last month, or 48,000 jobs, were positions created by the Census Bureau, which is expecting to hire hundreds of thousands of more workers in the next couple of months to knock on doors and collect data for the decennial count of the nation’s population. Many of these are part-time and will last only several weeks.
The March payroll gains also were likely inflated a little by the restoration of work that was temporarily halted in February because of the severe snowstorms. Construction employment in March, for example, turned up for the first time in many months, adding 15,000 jobs over the month.
Stripping out these special factors, the report still showed some encouraging signs. Manufacturing payrolls expanded for the third month in a roll, increasing by 17,000 in March. Health-care employers added 27,000 jobs, and the private temporary-help sector boosted its employee count by 40,000.
Businesses in financial services cut 21,000 jobs over the month, and the information industry eliminated a net 12,000 positions.
Despite the overall payroll gains, they weren’t enough to bring down the jobless rate as more people are beginning to enter the labor force after the long recession that wiped out 8.4 million jobs.
And the labor market remains severely distressed, with 13 states in double-digit unemployment and a record 44%, or 6.5 million, people who have been unemployed for six months or longer. A broader measure of unemployment and under-employment, which includes part-time workers who want full-time jobs, rose a notch to 16.9 percent in March.
Its Obama’s fault.
Jobs are being added, the auto industry is rebounding and stocks are up. The Tea Party lunatics are not going to like this.
How many of these jobs were in the private sector and how many were more government jobs? With Obama hiring 1,150,000 government workers for the census where are those numbers hidden?
Do not take anything this government says without thoroughly investigating the numbers, where they came, what is the back-up data and from whom was the information given. Obama is a salesman not a leader, a salesman with a teleprompter.
Toyota’s sales are up, but they just closed the last auto plant in California., putting 4,700 out of work. That is a liberal victory.
The US government added 200,000 temporary census workers, and that is treated as a victory.
The unemployment numbers were at 9.7% even when 200,000 jobs were LOST, and the total number of people not working but able to work is 20.8% and yet libs consider that a victory.
It appears that success is determined by adding people to the government dole.
These are Cencus workers! NOBODY believes this economy is getting better. Government jobs produce nothing and take more money from the private sector.
hey florida jim (or “paranoid jim”), did you feel that the same data was manipulated by the bush administration as well? or by clinton, or bush the first? god bless the paranoid freaks like you who have no brains. you make the republican party smile as they take u under their wings.
Dan C – my mother worked for the census in 1990 (she was a divorced 40-something white woman). it does help a lot & that money gets returned to the community (and businesses large & small) by the spending it helps foster. get a clue, not all government spending is wrong (and in this case, it’s constitutionally required).
Jobs are being added, the auto industry is rebounding and stocks are up. The Tea Party lunatics are not going to like this.
123,000 private sector jobs added…
8,000,000 jobs lost.
You got a loooooong way to go before pounding your chest and declaring a vistory big boy.
BTW, adding government jobs does not create ANYTHING but more taxes down the road to pay for the new ‘jobs’ .
OMG…can you people even read. It says that 48000 jobs were census workers/government jobs. Construction employment added 15,000 jobs over the month. Manufacturing payrolls expanded for the third month in a roll, increasing by 17,000 in March. Health-care employers added 27,000 jobs, and the private temporary-help sector boosted its employee count by 40,000. You are telling me these are all government jobs??? The private sector expanded job growth by over 100,000 jobs last month. This will be great for the market on monday and great for my wallet. Actually, I like republican naysyers…once they finally “see” the light I am out of the market. A day late and a dollar short. lol
Whatever. Teabaggers, rupublicans, conservatives, ditto-heads and other dead enders still want Obama to “fail”.
Although the employment numbers is better than if if had gone down, the recovery is still very, very weak. Economists were expecting 190,000 new jobs and only 162,000 were recreated. And that included 48,000 temporary positions (3 out of 10 new positions were from temporary census workers). The Official Unemployment Rate remained at 9.7 per cent (the real figure is much higher). And many States, including Illinois, still have Unemployment in double figures. I have been an Executive Recruiter for almost 25 years and this is by far the worst job market I have ever seen. Many good people have been laid off and will never get the same type of job or pay again, especially those individuals in their late 40’s or 50’s. But there were 123,000 jobs created in the private sector. It will be in the private sector that will bring the economy back to a full recovery not Government hiring. But compared to past recoveries in the Reagan and Clinton years, this recovery is very, very feeble and is a major caused for concern. Plus at the same time America Government Deficits are going through the ceiling. Regardless of what some politicians and commentators say, this is not a good situation folks.
At least it’s forward progress. And why is everyone complaining about government jobs? It’s something. If I remember correctly, the entire market was going to collapse if the government didn’t bail out the banks and the auto industry.
Thanks to corporate greed, free market capitalism was on the verge of total failure, but all its proponents conveniently forget this and continue to bite the hand that feeds while claiming they are never hungry.
“Juan Padilla, left, a district manager at Frito Lay, talks with job seeker William Garcia during the National Society for Hispanic Professionals Chicago bilingual job fair at Navy Pier in mid-March. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)”
So where’s the White Guys job fair?
I am betting that most new jobs are government jobs, or at least jobs that support big government. The IRS is going to need a lot of people to police the government run insurance companies that go along with socialist healthcare.
well, this is the first major employment swing for the better. Not going to complain.
It seems like yesterday that we were losing close to 800,000 jobs per month.
So what’s wrong with this picture:
8 years of Republican leadership leads us into the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. Obama takes office and improves job numbers. All the Republicans start complaining he’s not doing enough?
The GOP dug us a hole the size of the Grand Canyon and the wingnuts are complaing there aren’t enough jobs being created.
So what’s wrong with this picture:
8 years of Republican leadership leads us into the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost each month starting in December of 2007. Obama takes office and job numbers improve. All the Republicans start complaining he’s not doing enough?
The GOP dug us a hole the size of the Grand Canyon and the wingnuts are complaing there aren’t enough jobs being created. Can you imagine if the GOP were still in charge?
Florida Joe-
Obama could hand you a sack full of solid gold and you’d have some lame, mindless thing to say/complain about. I can just hear you now, “But, but the sack holding the gold was black. I wanted a white sack so after I spent the gold, I could use the sack as a hood for my next cross burning rally.”
This article is about the employment picture and the first up tick, no matter how feeble, in a long time. It is unfortunate that some of you out there on the Extreme Left and Right are still playing your usual political games, one even involved the race card, of blaming each other and the other side for this horrible economic situation that the United States and the World finds itself in. To my Far Left and Right Friends, I am sorry but the blame for this financial meltdown can be shared by both sides. And when historians write about this years from now they will probably find that the causes (and there was not just one cause as some of you maintain) were brewing under the surface for decades even during good times. It did not all happen under one administration or in one year. To me and many of us out the Unemployment Crisis is not a Democratic or Republican problem, but an American problem. Millions of jobs have been lost and many people will never get their jobs back. This has caused great hardship for millions out there. The most surprising thing from all this is one would think that the worst financial meltdown since the Great depression of the 1930’s would bring our elected national leaders including the President and Congressional Leadership and their followers together, but instead both the extremes of the Democratic and Republican Parties, including many of the goofy extreme supporters, continue to name call and blame each other. The vast majority of us out here, no matter if we are Democrats, Republicans or Independents, want a strong recovery. The major concern of many of us out here is that this recovery, compared historically to past recoveries, has been slow and very weak. And the job and unemployment crisis may be around for years. I hope I am wrong, but the employment picture in the country in the next few years does not look good.
I agree. It is the extremes that weaken, not strengthen, our great country.
The Census will be over in a few weeks. Let’s wait to see how Obama will spin once those census workers go back to the unemployment lines.
Oh YES! Unemployment is the same but we aded jobs last month. Our tax dollars just went to hire 36,000 Census workers for 6-12 weeks, and more tax dollars went to construction projects to hire Union tradesmen for 5 months.
Yet the Obama lemmings still think this is progress. Jesus, I can’t wait until November.
For all of you complaining about hiring census workers, remember that The Census is Mandated by the Constitution.
The number of people hired/fired in a month is not a reliable indicator of the health of the economy. Look at the trend over the past year or two years and you will see that the job market reversed a while back and is on a steady recovery. The job market has always lagged behind economic recovery, with the best example being that pre-depression job numbers were not fully recovered until 1944. The number of people being hired will continue to rise, particularly with the construction industry coming into season.
For those of you lame enough to cite the census as a reason for dismissing over 100,000 non-census jobs being created, please come back next month when the 50k+ census jobs are gone and our economy creates 150k jobs instead of 200k. In other words, it all equals out in the end.
In the meantime, thank goodness there is respite for some unemployed people who were able to enjoy a census paycheck.
Perhaps they will post this the second time. The Treasury Secr was out in full force yesterday putting a spin on the numbers before their release and the media fell for it. The Washington Post had a more realistic headline: Jobless Rate Unchanged; Economic Recovery Slow versus the Tribune’s rah, rah for a slight uptick
Hate to tell you tea partyers and Republican naysayers, but the economy is indeed improving. I know this personally. After months of networking and sending out resumes, I have had three calls for job interviews within the past week (BTW, none of the calls were for the census or construction jobs). This is happening to others in the networking groups I’m in as well…even the leaders of these groups have been commenting that there has been an improvement since last December. While the government’s most recent numbers are likely affected by the census and by construction/seasonal jobs, still there is no doubt that the economy is improving and Obama is indeed digging us out of the friggin’ mire that was left to him. So go ahead and whine until November, Republican’ts. It will be even better once more people have jobs and healthcare coverage. These certainly won’t be credited to Republican’ts come the November elections.
The headline should read, “More Temporary Census Jobs Added in March”
The amployment numbers are up only because of increased government jobs and census workers.