March Employment Data

The Department of Labor's March employment figures are now in.  The highlights include 216,000 jobs added last month, with the unemployment rate down to 8.8% (from 8.9% the previous month).  Overall, this slightly beat expectations and appears to be viewed as good, but not great, news.  In does, however, represent another month of growing private-sector employment (now at 13 months in a row), albeit relatively modest growth.  But, there are still a lot of long-term unemployed, low labor participation rate, and unchanged number of hours worked.  On the other hand, unemployment claims have been dropping.  In short, things are looking a bit better and continues to give hope for a future recovery, but we're still not there yet.

-JH