It's about Jobs, Whether You Have One

At 8:30 Friday morning, the government put out a few numbers about unemployment, and like all numbers, they can say many things.

It's all a matter of perspective. A couple weekends ago, a line of people encircled an entire city block in New York, waiting to take a civil service exam for the state Motor Vehicles Department. The state gives these exams every so often, but this looked like the longest I've seen in 20 years.

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics report was decidedly upbeat. The two big numbers were a 216,000 increase in the number of new hires, and a small drop in the unemployment rate to 8.8 percent. The BLS summary provides a complete snapshot.

Over all, economists liked these numbers a lot and said the country's economic recovery appeared to be on solid ground. The reports were the best in years. But they had caveats.

Their cautions partially explained the huge number of people hoping for a spot in the state government's work force. Wages have been flat, and 6 million people who have been out of work for 6 months or more and are still looking for jobs remained out of work.

In addition, the number of people not counted in the labor force grew by 2 million to 85.6 million since March 2010. Many are in school and many are retired. Some have never worked and some are considered discouraged workers who drop out of the labor market. The report includes the 239 million Americans 16 years and older who are not in institutions.

The penalty for lacking education is the job market today is severe. People who don't have a high school diploma have an 13.7 percent unemployment rate, while college graduates have a 4.4 percent unemployment rate.

The disparity by race remains striking. Unemployment among whites was 8.3 percent, down a full percentage point since March 2010, but among blacks joblessness was 15.5 percent, down more than a percentage point in the year.

Among both whites and blacks, women were doing better than men.

The situation for young people, 16 to 19 years old was far worse. Their unemployment rate 23.6 percent, but down from 25.3 a year ago.

These figures about the composition of the labor force are taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Household survey, which questions individuals about their job status.

The hiring statistics are from a survey of employers, which queries a much larger group monthly.

It goes a long way to explaining why average earnings did not increase. A good deal of the job growth was in occupations with lower pay. Some of the largest gains were in the health care, temporary, and leisure and hospitality industries.

One of the weakest areas is employment in state government jobs. March was the third consecutive month of decline amid the budget crises across the nation.

Improvements were posted in manufacturing in each of the last three months, but the pace is slowing. Construction hiring leveled off after a good month in February.

Temporary workers are included in the professional services group, which showed gains in other areas, notably in technology. Kathy Northamer, a district president for Robert Half International, which places both temporary and full-time workers, said her company expects strong hiring in the coming months. Companies have been "running very lean" and demand for skilled workers should be improving. She noted that the outlook is particularly good in the Mountain states and on the West Coast.