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National Numbers Flat in March
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Business New Haven
5/13/2002
By: Susan Cornell
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Nationally, too, both unemployment and payroll numbers were little changed in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor.
Construction and manufacturing lost nearly 40,000 jobs each, yet services employment grew substantially. Both the manufacturing workweek and overtime hours rose over the month, reported the BLS.
The unemployment rate (5.7 percent) and the number of unemployed persons (8.1 million) were flat in March. Since October, the jobless rate has hovered within 0.2 percent of 5.6 percent. The unemployment rate for blacks swelled to 10.7 percent; jobless rates for the other major worker groups - adult males (5.2 percent), adult females (5.0 percent), teenagers (16.4 percent), Latinos (7.3 percent), and whites (5.0 percent) - showed little or no change.
Total seasonally-adjusted employment fell by 425,000 to 133.9 million - some 1.9 million fewer jobs than a year earlier. The labor force participation rate (66.6 percent) and the civilian labor force (142.0 million) were likewise little changed from February to March. Over the past year, there has been little net change in the labor force while the labor force participation rate has decreased by 0.6 percentage point.
Roughly 7.4 million workers (not seasonally adjusted) held more than one job in March. These multiple jobholders represented 5.5 percent of the total employed, about the same proportion as a year ago.
Approximately 1.3 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force in March. This means that they wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, yet were not counted as unemployed because they had not actively searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.
“Discouraged” workers - those not currently looking for work because they believed no jobs are available - numbered 319,000 in March.
Of the 8.1 million jobless, 16.3 percent (1.3 million) had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer, the highest level since mid-1996, according to the BLS.
Analysts point to two factors regarding the difficulty of procuring employment despite economic recovery:
- While the economy is showing strength, the job market remains weak, forcing some to spend additional time seeking work. Typically, the job market lags the rest of the economy during periods of recovery.
- Congress passed a long-awaited measure allowing an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits after the regular 26-week period expires. Plus, the bill allowed for additional extensions in states with high unemployment rates.
Most economists concur that the recession ended at the beginning of 2002. But they also project that the next few months will show an increasing number of persons are staying jobless longer.
Manufacturing job losses continued, but the declines of 38,000 in March and 54,000 in February were much smaller than in prior months. From January 2001 to January 2002, job losses in the nation's factories averaged 111,000 per month. Over the month, employment in industrial machinery and electronic equipment decreased by 7,000 and 10,000, respectively, much smaller than their average losses over the past year.
Although economists are optimistic that the nation's payrolls will continue to grow, many still foresee a rise in unemployment because job growth may not be sufficient enough to take care of the expected increase in those entering the labor force.
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