US employers added 120,000 jobs in March as the unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday. The stock markets in the U.S. are closed today for the Good Friday holiday, so investors won't get a chance to act on the jobs news until Monday. But the job additions may disappoint some people. Economists expected 210,000 jobs to be added in March and the unemployment rate to stay at 8.3 percent as more discouraged workers reentered the job market.
In February employers added 227,000 jobs which was slightly more than expected and capped the best six-month streak for job additions since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008. The unemployment rate for February stayed at 8.3 percent.
The report comes on the heels of two private surveys showing the economy is getting better. CareerBuilder's quarterly report says more employers are planning to add to their workforce. "Thirty percent of employers we spoke to say they plan to hire full-time positions in the second quarter," said Michael Erwin of CareerBuilder. This compares with 24 percent in the last survey three months ago. "The numbers are going back to where they were pre-recession so that's good news employers are back to the table, they're looking to hire."
Polling by Gallup found job market conditions in March reached their best level since August 2008. Gallup's Job Creation Index now at +18, up from +14 in February.
Jobless claims are now down to their lowest level in four years, after falling to 357,000 in the final week of March, the Labor Department reported Thursday in advance of the monthly jobs report. For the week ending March 31, the number of people filing for benefits dropped by 6,000. The previous week, claims stood at 363,000.The four-week average also went down, falling by 4,250 to 361,750.
While admitting that a decline in unemployment insurance claims is mildly good news, its not the full story according to Stephen Bronars, senior economist with Welch Consulting. The jobless claims figure is, of course, one of the most widely cited and yet misunderstood numbers. And the devil is in the details. As Bronars explained, in order to file new claim you had to be working, and then get laid off.
"The biggest problem we have is not high layoffs, but low rates of hiring. There were fewer layoffs in 2011 than in any year in more than a decade. Firms had already cut their workforces in the recession and layoffs fell in the past 2 years," Bronars told ABCNews.com. "Through the first quarter of the year we have seen 5.1 million people file for unemployment insurance benefits for the first time. We are on pace to have over 19 million first-time unemployment claims in 2012," according to Bronars.
And the other issue on the job front is that people finishing school can't find full-time jobs and the the long-term unemployed are struggling to find work. "Until hiring picks up, these problems will persist," Bronars says. He says that it seems clear from the data that workers are not as confident about the economy as the experts are.
"People don't quit a job in a recession or if they think it will be very difficult to find a better job. In a healthy job market, people are optimistic enough to quit their jobs. Quits are still 30 percent below their pre-recession levels. So, with all due respect to the so-called economic experts, if the labor market is creating so many jobs, why aren't more people quitting their current jobs to move into better higher paying jobs? I will believe the labor market has recovered when we see an increase in quits," Bronars said.
Poster Comment:
Not the number of added jobs i wanted to see but the headline unemployment rate dropping to 8.2 isn't a bad thing.
