American companies added more than 120,000 new jobs to their payrolls during the month of March.
Despite the gains, the country’s overall unemployment rate of 5.5% was unchanged month over month with new jobs replacing those shed, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
While the maintenance of the status quo might not seem like a step forward for the economy, the department reports a steady uptick of employment opportunities in a wide variety of industry areas, including healthcare, retail and professional and business services. Loses were experienced in the mining industry.
The March 2015 Employment Situation report’s findings also show a return in unemployment levels that are near to the pre-recession low of 5% recorded in December 2007.
The steady decline in opportunities brought America’s unemployment level to a peak high of 10% in October 2009, which paled in comparison to the 10.8% unemployment rate of the 1980s’ recession.
The March 2015 BLS employment report draws statistics from two surveys: the Current Population Survey and the Current Employment Statistics survey.
The population survey is conducted on behalf of BLS by the U.S. Census Bureau and involves an estimated 60,000 eligible households.
The employment statistics data is collected from the payroll records of an estimated 143,000 businesses and government agencies.
Unemployment Holding its Own
In March, BLS estimated the number of unemployed persons at 8.6 million across the country.
The year-over-year data shows the number of unemployed persons is down by an estimated 1.1 percentage points, which represents an estimated 1.8 million workers.
The unemployment rates in March for major worker groups were as follows:
- Adult men, 5.1%
- Adult women, 4.9%
- Teenagers, 17.5%
- Caucasians, 4.7%
- Blacks, 10.1%
- Asians, 3.2%
- Hispanics, 6.8%
The number of new unemployed fell by 157,000 in March and is down year over year by an estimated 342,000, BLS reported.
Long-term unemployment, however, remained relatively unchanged at 2.6 million in March.
Loses and Gains
The bureau’s report also delves into the number of jobs added to the economy by industry. In March, BLS estimated losses and gains by industry as follows:
- Healthcare – An estimated 22,000 jobs were added in March. Over the last year, an estimated 363,000 jobs have been added in this segment of the economy.
- Retail trade – This segment of the economy also continued to trend upward with an estimated 26,000 jobs added in March. This figure is in line with the industry’s 12-month average gain.
- Professional and business services – This industry area drew the biggest gains with more than 40,000 jobs added in March. On average, this segment has seen 34,000 jobs added each month in the first quarter.
- Mining – This industry witnessed a loss of 11,000 jobs in March and a total of about 30,000 in 2015 so far. A total of 41,000 jobs, however, were added to this segment of the economy in 2014, BLS reported.
BLS issues its Employment Situation report at the beginning of each month. The next release is scheduled for May 8.
