Friday, April 01, 2011

U.S. Economy Added 216,000 Jobs in March; Rate at 8.8%

The United States economy added 216,000 jobs in March, the Labor Department reported Friday, adding to hopes that hiring was finally on a steadier track despite concerns about overseas turmoil.

The gain in jobs slightly exceeded economists’ expectations. The unemployment rate continued to decline, to 8.8 percent.

Quite a few signs have pointed to this economic recovery finally gaining some momentum. The weekly unemployment claims have declined steadily, from the mid-400,000s to the neighborhood of 385,000. In most contexts, the latter would be a grim number. But in this slowest and most sluggish of recoveries, it points to fewer layoffs, and presumably to more hiring.

Still, threats to a more robust recovery remain, of course, including a surge in energy and food prices, with the possibility of disruptions in oil production in the Middle East continuing to weigh on the financial markets. State and local governments have also been shedding jobs as they grapple with budget woes.
Read the rest here.

6 comments:

rabidgandhi said...

Sweet! Can we start deregulating and bailing out banks again?

The Anti-Gnostic said...

"Deregulating" and "bailing out" are antithetical concepts. The last thing the Federal Reserve and its member banks want is a free market in banking and currency.

rabidgandhi said...

Antithetical or not, the former leads to the latter, and thus both have been heartily deployed by Fed chairs such as Volker, Greenspan and Bernanke.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

That happens only because Uncle Sugar protects people from the consequences of highly leveraged activities, a backstop that enables such activities in the first place. It is not a problem of deregulation per se.

rabidgandhi said...

A very astute observation. Uncle Sugar protects people from risk, but Uncle Sugar has a very odd definition of what "people" are; in this case "people" are large multinational finance corporations. But if those other two-legged creatures claiming personhood (such as myself)would like to be bailed out of highly leveraged risk, Uncle Sugar ain't so generous.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

No argument from me. JP Morgan/Chase, Goldman Sachs, GM, et al. should have been told that the US taxpayers, in their generosity, have already provided a 'bailout' to those in need of a fresh start in the form of the US Bankruptcy Code.

Of course, Congress has made increasing categories of debt non-dischargeable for individuals.