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Thoughts on today's unemployment report...

As Atrios stated a few minutes back, finally some goods new from March's employment report. 308K new jobs, according to the industry survey.

Unfortunately, all is not rosy. After just a preliminary look-see, here are a few down notes:

The number of individuals working part-time for economic reasons jumped by nearly 300,000.

Over the past year, the number of people not in the the labor force has increased from 74.5 million to 76.0 million (+1.5 million).

While the BLS report states that the number of discouraged workers is the same as last year, the number, now over a half million, is in fact up 8% over March 2003. At the same time, the number of people who are unemployed but want a job increased by nearly 100K in the last month.

According to the household survey, the number of employed workers actually fell by 3,000. This is significant, as the Administration for months has touted that employment growth in the household survey was in fact the more accurate indicator of the health of US employment situtation.

The employment-population ratio fell back to 62.1%, tied with last September as the lowest level since March, 1994.

The average work week decreased by 0.1% in March.

The average hourly wage increased by 2 cents this month. While this might sound okay, in perspective, it's terrible. Since last July, worker bee wages have only gone up 10 cents, way below the annual average increases seen in the 1990s of 40 to 50 cents. When inflation is factored in (so-called "Constant (1982) dollars"), American workers have in fact lost ground since last summer, by $0.05 since July. (see charts)

So while the jobs picture itself is good news (if it's not revised down next month), there are a number of issues which do not spell good news for American workers, employed or not.

Posted by MB Williams at April 2, 2004 08:59 AM | TrackBack