Good News on Unemployment

We gained 162,000 jobs in March. While that figure included temporary census counters, we added 123,000 in the non-census-worker-influenced private sector, a very positive sign. The March job gains, coupled with revised figures for earlier months, mean we have increased jobs in three of the last five months.

The unemployment rate remains high at 9.7%, but that’s partly because the improving job situation has encouraged more people to look for employment (the unemployment rate is the share of people looking for work who can’t find it). During the earlier bad months, the unemployment rate was artificially low, because those too discouraged to look for work dropped out of the workforce entirely. Now they are returning.