The nation’s rate of unemployment has been steadily declining for months from the eye-popping numbers that charted the eight million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007. In March, finally, the employment numbers reversed from the negative side of the recession’s ledger to the positive side: some 162,000 net new jobs were added to the economy. That’s a welcome and long-awaited sign that an economic recovery is under way, and can now be seen in the toughest lagging indicator of all: the number of new jobs added.
There are some caveats. Roughly 30 percent of those new jobs (about 48,000) are temporary Census Bureau jobs related to the decennial Census. Another 40,000 were temporary service jobs. Yet many jobs in the latter category were created by companies across the board. That suggests to analysts that employers are testing the economy’s strength and consumer spending with an eye toward adding permanent workers, at last.
That welcome tipping point, economic analysts believe, is reinforced by another factor: Every major industry except for financial services and information appeared to have added new jobs. “From manufacturing, to construction, to retail, it really didn’t matter,” John Ryding, chief economist at the RDQ Economics, told The New York Times. “They’re all hiring now.”
The United States must add about 100,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth and new entrants into the job market, so it’s clear that the employment report for March is not significantly ahead of the break-even point the economy needs to propel robust growth. Nevertheless, the March figure is infinitely better than the dismal plunge in jobs that plagued the nation in the wake of the October, 2008, implosion of the financial markets.
In the worst months following that catastrophe, monthly unemployment numbers sank like a stone. First they dipped steadily from 200,000 to the 350,000 range, and then the bottom fell out. Shocking monthly reports on unemployment fell in a downward spiral to a catastrophic trough, from more than 400,000 jobs lost in September 2008 to nearly 800,000 in January 2009 alone. The dismal monthly indices then began a long and steady climb upward, finally getting above the monthly 400,000 job-loss barrier in June 2009, and creeping into the neutral zone just in January of this year.