663,000 jobs were lost in the USA in March and the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.
In March, the number of unemployed persons increased by 694,000 to 13.2 million, and the unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent. Why is that different than the numbers above? The numbers are from different sources of data, the first from BLS surveys of businesses and the 694,000 from household surveys. This reminds us that this data is approximate, not exact. Undoubtedly the figures will be revised as more data is analyzed.
Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has grown by about 5.3 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 3.4 percentage points. Half of the increase in both the number of unemployed and the unemployment rate occurred in the last 4 months.
The unemployment rates continued to trend upward in March for adult men, 8.8%, adult women 7.0%, whites 7.9% and Hispanics 11.4%. The jobless rates for African Americans, 13.3% and teenagers 21.7% were little changed over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 6.4% in March, not seasonally adjusted, up from 3.6% a year earlier.
Related: Over 500,000 Jobs Disappeared in November – Manufacturing Employment Data – 1979 to 2007 – What Do Unemployment Stats Mean?
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