Unemployment Rate Dip Offers Little Reason to Celebrate

Courtesy of NBC News by Allison Linn: If you’re thinking a drop in the jobless rate is reason to celebrate, bad news: You might want to keep that bottle of bubbly corked.

The unemployment rate dipped to 7.6 percent in March, from 7.7 percent a month earlier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. But the drop came as nearly 500,000 Americans left the labor force, meaning they stopped working or looking for work and were no longer counted in the official employment numbers.

“Normally we’d love to see a decline in the unemployment rate. Unfortunately, this was largely due to a lot of people dropping out of the labor force,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist with Naroff Economic Advisors.

The economy added a paltry 88,000 jobs in March, according to a separate tally included in the jobs report. That’s about half the number that many experts had been expecting.

“It’s not a promising picture. You want to see the unemployment rate go down because people are getting jobs,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The disappointing jobs growth in March came after several more promising months. The economy added 268,000 jobs in February, after gaining 148,000 jobs in January.

Economists would like to be seeing 200,000 to 400,000 jobs added in a given month to feel like the job market is truly entering a period of strong recovery. But employers have been very slow to add jobs, and millions of Americans have found it incredibly difficult to get work.

Category: Featured, General Update