In the weakest jobs report in 16 months, the economy created
129,000 new seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs in March, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That made it the first month in the past 13 that new job generation was less than 200,000. The public sector shed 3,000 jobs for a net gain of 126,000. That is the lowest number since December 2013.
The bureau revised January's tally from 239,000 to 201,000 new jobs. February's original calculation was also revised downward, from 295,000 to 264,000.
The job-creation slowdown comes at the same time as some other metrics are showing that economic growth for the first quarter of 2015 was slower than had been predicted. The consensus of experts queried earlier in the week had forecast job gains of 250,000. But, as the good advice always has it, one month does not make a trend.
The official "headline" unemployment rate—which is called U3 in BLS jargon—remained at 5.5 percent. U6, the bureau's gauge of unemployment and underemployment, includes people with no job at all, part-time workers who want full-time jobs but can't find one, and many "discouraged" workers. It fell from 11 percent to 10.9 percent.
The civilian workforce fell by 96,000 in March. Wages moved up slightly.
The employment-population ratio stayed at 59.3 percent for the third consecutive month. Labor force participation remained unchanged at 62.7 percent.
The BLS calculated that 8.6 million people were officially out of work in March. This excludes Americans who have left the workforce and still want a job but have given up searching for one.
One important BLS measure is of workers in their prime years—those aged 25-54—who are employed. In some ways this gives a better picture the health of the job market because it excludes workers during their late teens and early 20s when many go to college or travel and often don't hold down a job. A peak of 81.9 percent in that cohort was reached in April 2000. The month the Great Recession began, in December 2007, the figure was 79.7 percent. It reached a low point of 74.8 percent in November 2010. On a slow rise ever since, it is now 77.2 percent, down 0.1 from February.
The bureau points out that "the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 90,000." That means the "real" number of new jobs created in March wasn't 126,000 but somewhere in a range between 36,000 and 216,000.
For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.
Key aspects of the report:
Hours & Wages
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose 4 cents to $20.86.
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payrolls fell to 34.5 hours, the first change in six consecutive months.
•Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls rose 7 cents to $24.86
• The manufacturing workweek fell to 40.9 hours.
• The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose/fell was unchanged at 33.7 hours.
Among other news in the March job report:
Demographic breakdown of official (U3) seasonally adjusted jobless rate:
• African American: 10.1 percent, down from 10.4 percent in February
• Latino: 6.8 percent, up from 6.6 percent in February
• Asian (not seasonally adjusted): 3.2 percent down from 4.0 percent in February
• American Indian (data not collected on monthly basis)
• White: 4.7 percent, unchanged from February
• Adult women (20 and older): 4.9 percent, unchanged from February
• Adult Men (20 and older): 5.1 percent, down from 5.2 percent in February
• Teenagers (16-19): 17.5 percent, up from 17.1 percent in February
Duration of unemployment:
• Less than five weeks: 2.488 million, up from 2.43 million in February
• 5 to 14 weeks: 2.312 million, up from 2.223 million in February
• 15 to 26 weeks: 1.253 million, down from 1.335 million in February
• 27 weeks and more: 2.563 million, down from 2.709 million in February
Job gains and losses in selected categories:
• Professional services: + 40,000
• Transportation & warehousing : + 9,500
• Leisure & hospitality: + 13,000
• Information: + 2,000
• Health care & social assistance: + 30,000
• Retail trade: + 25,900
• Construction: - 1,000
• Manufacturing: - 1,000
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in March for the previous 10 years.
March 2005: + 135,000
March 2006: + 281,000
March 2007: + 188,000
March 2008: - 79,000
March 2009: - 824,000
March 2010: + 161,000
March 2011: + 206,000
March 2012: + 216,000
March 2013: + 115,000
March 2014: + 225,000
March 2015: + 126,000
••• •••
The BLS jobs report is the product of a pair of surveys, one of more than 410,000 business establishments called Current Employment Statistics, and one called the Current Population Survey, which questions 60,000 householders each month. Here is the BLS's explanation of its methodology. The establishment survey determines how many new jobs were added. It is always calculated on a seasonally adjusted basis determined by a frequently tweaked formula. The BLS report only provides a snapshot of what's happening at a single point in time.
It's important to understand that the jobs-created-last-month-numbers that it reports are not "real." Not because of a conspiracy, but because statisticians apply formulas to the raw data, estimate the number of jobs created by the "birth" and "death" of businesses, and use other filters to fine-tune the numbers. And, always good to remember, in the fine print, they tell us, with a 90 percent confidence level, that the actual number of newly created jobs reported each falls within a plus or minus 90,000 range.