The trend of big job losses continued last month. In March there were 663,000 fewer jobs than in February, which was 651,000 lower than January, which was down 741,000 jobs. Since December 2007, the economy has 5,133,000 million jobs, or 3.7 percent.
 
No surprise that the unemployment rate jumped in March to 8.5 percent, 0.4 points higher than February. A year ago, which was a few months into the recession and the employment economy was already experiencing jobs losses of just over 100,000, the unemployment rate was 3.4 points lower at 5.1 percent.
 
Jobs Report
Job losses were spread somewhat evenly between the two major sectors of the economy, despite their unequal total size. The Goods-producing lost 305,000 jobs in March while the Service-providing sector was down 358,000.

• The trend in Manufacturing was consistent with recent history with a loss of 161,000 jobs across all major sub-sectors with production workers taking the major hit (-146,000).
• The Construction sector continued to haul jobs to the dump with a 126,000 job-loss in March; especially hard-hit were Specialty Trade Contractors (-82,600).

• Even Mining and Logging chopped down jobs with a reduction of 18,000 jobs although a majority of those lost jobs (13,500) were in Support Activities for Mining and not the actual mining sub-sectors, which only experienced incremental losses.

The Service-providing sector, which accounts for about 85 percent of all employment, lost 358,000 jobs in March, which was a slight improvement over February's loss of 366,00 jobs.
 

• The Retail Trade sector continued to reduce its inventory of jobs in March -- it had 47,800 fewer jobs than the previous month. General merchandise stores bucked the trend and added 13,800 jobs perhaps as consumers consolidate their purchases and limit their shopping experience.

• The Wholesale Trade sector continued to eliminate jobs on a wholesale basis and ended the month with 31,200 fewer jobs although a majority of those reductions were again in the Durable Goods sub sector (-26,400) compared to Nondurable Goods (-3,200).

• And Transportation and Warehousing, which had less stuff to move and store, eliminated 34,000 jobs throughout all major sub sectors.

Financial Activities continued to take jobs off its balance sheets and ended March with 43,000 fewer jobs. Guess they need fewer people to figure annual bonus checks.

• Professional and Business Services, which is a large sector employing nearly 17 million, was down 133,000 jobs last month; much of the loss was due to Employment Services (-88,400). About the only positive development was that Accounting and Bookkeeping Services, no doubt due to this being tax season, added 1,600 jobs. Computer Systems Design and Related Services lost 3,900 jobs in March.
• The health part of the Education and Health Services continued to be one of the few areas of the employment economy with a pulse. Educational Services, which is very seasonal, took away 6,800 jobs in March. However, Health Care and Social Assistance had a strong jobs pulse with 14,800 new jobs in most major sectors although the count was incrementally down in Hospitals (-700) and Child Day Care Services (-2,600). Home Health Care Services added 2,700 jobs.
• There was not much of a party over at the Leisure and Hospitality sector with a loss of 40,000 jobs in March with Accommodation and Foods Services responsible for most (-31,500) of that loss. The loss in the Accommodation part, which is much smaller with about 1.7 million total jobs, was much greater (-22,600) than in Food Services and Drinking Places (-8,900) that has about 9.5 million jobs.
• The Government shrank by 5,000 jobs total in March. Although the federal government added 7,000 jobs; state governments had to eliminate 3,000, and local governments cut 9,000 jobs.

Temporary Help Services Roundup
Temporary Help Services Employment was 1,816,800, or down 3.8 percent, from the previous month. Year-to-year loss was nearly 27 percent. Since December 2006, Temporary Help Services has lost more than 850,000 jobs, or 32 percent.

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And Temporary Help Services continued to lose market share (percent of all jobs) -- it was 1.37 percent of all jobs in March; the last time it was so low was February 1994. It was 1.8 percent a year ago.
 
Household Survey
The unemployment rate continued to rise to 8.5 percent as the number of unemployed persons was about 13.2 million out of a total labor force of a little more than 154 million.

The employment-to-population ratio declined by 0.4 percent to 59.9 percent while the labor force participation rate inched down 0.1 percent to 65.5 percent.

 

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