Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – The economy added 216,000 jobs in March, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday.
That is good news, but analysts say if the economy only creates 200,000 jobs monthly it would take about a decade to put everyone back to work who lost a job during the recession, because the economy needs to add from 120,000 to 200,000 jobs monthly to keep up with workers entering the labor force for the first time.
March job gains were mostly in professional and business services, health care, leisure and hospitality and mining. In addition, manufacturing employment continued its upward trend.
The unemployment rate edged down slightly to 8.8 percent and 13.5 million people are officially counted as unemployed. That 8.8 percent is down by 1.0 percentage point from November 2010.
However, the employment rate of 64.2 percent remained unchanged since February. When the economy is healthy, the employment rate runs at 89 percent or higher.
Unemployment rates for major worker groups did not show much change in March. The unemployment rate for adult men was 8.6 percent, for adult women it was 7.7 percent, while teenagers had a 24.5 percent rate. Overall, 7.9 percent of whites were unemployed, while the rate was 15.5 percent for blacks and 11.3 percent for Hispanics.
About 8.4 million people were involuntarily employed part time for economic reasons because either their hours were cut back or they were unable to find a full-time job. That number was little changed in March.
Nevertheless, the economy is still shedding jobs.
The number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs was little changed at 8.2 million for March. However, the 6.1 million people classified as long-term unemployed, because they have been jobless for 27 weeks or longer, rose from 43.9 percent in February to 45.5 percent in March.
Job losses are likely to continue. For example, employers in hard-hit Florida have given the state notices of planned mass layoffs through June that total 4,888 employees so far this year.
That includes jobs in some of the areas that the economy added jobs in March, such as professional and business services, health care and manufacturing. In addition, those mass layoffs affected workers in the retail, wholesale, financial services, education, transportation, administration, real estate and rental sectors.
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