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April 4, 2008
March Employment Down 80,000
(April 4, 2008) - The BLS released The Employment Situation: March 2008 on Friday morning, announcing that the unemployment rate rose from 4.8% to 5.1% in March while non-farm payroll employment fell by 80K jobs. Payroll employment has declined by 232K over the past 3 months. Both average hourly earnings (+0.3%) and total hours worked (+0.2%) increased. The Household Survey showed a smaller job loss (22,000) in March.
The 80K job loss number was not a complete shock. The day before, we saw 407K initial unemployment claims--a big number. It is worth noting, however, that 51K of the jobs were lost in construction due to the housing crunch. And 42K jobs in March were lost as a result of the American Axle strike that shut down a number of auto plants.(The strike was on March 10; the initial claims number was for the week of March 12). Together, that accounts for -93K jobs in March.
Bottom line. Medium ugly but more consistent with modest positive growth than falling GDP. I still think we will see 1%-ish Q1 growth with a pickup after that.
JR
Posted by John Rutledge at April 4, 2008 3:05 PM
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