By Susan A. Baird
PBN Web Editor
WASHINGTON – U.S. nonfarm payrolls shrank by 80,000 jobs last month, after losing a revised 76,000 per month in January and February, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said today.
“Over the past three months, payroll employment has declined by 232,000,” the BLS noted.
Not only did U.S. payrolls shrink for a third consecutive month – for what Bloomberg News said was the first time since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 – but revisions in today’s report also pared a total of 67,000 jobs from the figures originally reported for January and February. (READ MORE)
Analysts had expected a 50,000-job loss last month would follow February’s previously reported 63,000-job decline, based on the median forecast from a Bloomberg survey of 79 economists. (Their March predictions ranged from a decline of 150,000 jobs to a gain of 65,000.)
“To put these recent changes into context, I would note that labor market conditions started to weaken more than a year ago,” BLS Commissioner Keith Hall told Congress today in an address today before the Joint Economic Committee. “Average monthly job growth slowed from 175,000 in 2006 to 107,000 in the first half of 2007, to 76,000 in the last half of 2007 and to [negative] 77,000 for the first quarter of this year. The unemployment rate remained at or near 4.5 percent during the first half of 2007 but rose to 4.7 percent in the third quarter, 4.8 percent in the fourth quarter and 4.9 percent in the first quarter of this year.
“Returning to the payroll employment figures for March, job losses occurred in construction, manufacturing and employment services. Job growth continued in health care, food services and mining,” Hall said.
“The construction industry lost 51,000 jobs over the month, with declines concentrated in residential and nonresidential specialty trade contracting. Since its peak in September 2006, construction employment has fallen by 394,000.
“Manufacturing employment decreased by 48,000 in March,” he said. Employment in auto manufacturing fell 24,000, mostly because of the continuing strike at an auto parts maker that “triggered plant shutdowns and idled workers at non-striking motor vehicle factories.” But, he said, “both manufacturing hours and overtime were up by one- tenth of an hour.” The average manufacturing workweek was 41.3 hours in March, while manufacturing overtime averaged 4.1 hours. Including non-manufacturing workers, the average workweek last month was 33.8 hours.
“In the service-providing sector, employment services shed 42,000 jobs in March. … Over the past 12 months, employment services has lost 158,000 jobs, three-fourths of which were in temporary help. Professional and technical services employment was little-changed for the third consecutive month, compared with average monthly job gains of 27,000 in 2007.”
Hall said “employment growth continued in health care and in food services,” which each added 23,000 jobs in March. “In the goods-producing sector, mining employment rose by 6,000 due to gains in oil and gas extraction and related support activities.”
Average hourly earnings for nonmanufacturing production workers rose to $17.86 in March, an increase of 0.3 percent, or 5 cents per hour, from February and 3.6 percent over the past 12 months, the BLS said.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate nationwide rose to 5.1 percent – 0.1 percent higher than in the Bloomberg survey – from February’s unrevised 4.8 percent. The number of unemployed persons nationwide rose to 7.8 million in March, an increase of 434,000 from the month before and 1.1 million from March 2007.
“You can pretty much write off the next few months of consumer and labor-market data,” James O’Sullivan, a senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Conn., told Bloomberg News. “The weakness is feeding on itself. Job cuts are leading to weaker consumer spending, which will in turn lead to more job cuts.”
For additional information from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, including the 29-page Employment Situation Summary and the BLS Commissioner’s Statement on the Employment Situation release, visit www.bls.gov.
