March Employment and Unemployment: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and unemployment for March (pdf summary available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf). Highlights of the report:

Unemployment Rate

• The unemployment rate edged down to 8.8% in March.  The unemployment rate was 8.9% in February and 9.0% in January. 
• The percentage and number of long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) jumped up to 45.5% and 6.1 million in March, from 43.9% and 6.0 million in February. 
• The labor force grew by a statistically insignificant 160,000 in March and the labor force participation rate held steady at 64.2%. 
• There were 13.5 million unemployed persons in March, down from 13.7 million in February.

Payroll Employment

• Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 216,000 in March, following gains of 194,000 in February (revised slightly up from 192,000) and 63,000 in January (revised slightly up from 63,000).  

o   Private sector employment rose by 230,000 while government employment fell by 14,000.

o   The largest private sector employment gains came from professional and business services (+78,000), health care (+37,000), leisure and hospitality (+37,000), and mining (+14,000).