The U.S. economy added 98,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate declined to 4.5%, according to figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While the job growth was tepid in March, and the revisions for the numbers for January and February are weaker than earlier reported, the economy is continuing close to the trend of job growth that started under President Barack Obama. If we continue the trend of job growth over the past seven years he established, the economy will add another 25 million jobs in eight years. Oddly, the claim President Donald Trump has made is that he will create 25 million jobs.
Still, wage growth needs time to recover as does the share of workers employed so household incomes can recover to their 1999 peak. With modest job gains in March, the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve that sets monetary policy needs to pause ahead of its proposed interest rate hike in June. The higher interest rates are meant to signal a return to normal, but we are not there, yet.
The biggest gains were in professional and business services (+56,000) and in mining (+11,000), while retail trade lost jobs (-30,000). Other sectors of note include health care (+14,000) and financial services (+9,000). According to BLS, construction employment saw little change in March (+6,000).
Employment in other major industries, including manufacturing, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, leisure and hospitality, and government, showed little or no change over the month.
Among the demographic groups of working people, the unemployment rates for adult women (4.0%), white people (3.9%) and Hispanic people (5.1%) declined in March. The jobless rates for adult men (4.3%), teenagers (13.7%), black people (8.0%) and Asian people (3.3%) showed little or no change.
This blog was originally posted on aflcio.org on April 7, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
