March Unemployment: Barely Budging

One brief comment on the jobs numbers. The net addition of 216,000 jobs, from the so-called payroll survey, is respectable. But the “household survey” reports roughly the same number of unemployed Americans: 13.5 million. You can’t tell a lot from any one month’s numbers, as we have warned, but the unemployment rate barely budged because the “civilian workforce” added nearly as many people as the economy did jobs.

For pessimists, the number to worry about is what we call “U-7.” It includes all Americans “who currently want a job” but aren’t officially “in the labor force”; i.e., they haven’t looked for work in the past year. The March U-7: 17.7 percent.

See Weekonomics: Our Friday Roundup for a video of Paul chatting with MIT economist Simon Johnson for more on the unemployment numbers and the news of the week.

This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions _Follow Paul on Twitter._