Jobs Report: Decent Employment News Amid Market Turmoil
This post by Jill Schlesinger originally appeared on CBS' MoneyWatch.com.
While you're sitting around trying to figure out who "Fat Finger Freddy" is or maybe feeling a little nostalgic for the old-time specialist system where two-sided markets had to be maintained, we got some good news on the employment front.
The BLS said that US employers added 290,000 new non-farm jobs last month. (For curmudgeons, I should note that 66,000 of those jobs were from census hiring, but more for the bears in a bit.) In addition to the larger-than-expected increase in jobs, there were positive revisions on the last two months, amounting to another 121,000 jobs and average hours worked increased. And don't get too nutty about the unemployment rate, which ticked up to 9.9% from 9.7% -- that's more of a sign that people have re-igniting their job searches amid improving conditions.
Still, there are some troubling aspects to the labor report. Notably, the broad unemployment rate (which includes part-time and marginally attached workers) increased from 16.5% in March to 17.1%. Additionally, the number of long-term unemployed (those out of work for more than a year) spiked to 6.7 million, a record 4.34% of the civilian work force and 45.9% of the total unemployed.
Bottom line: the jobs situation is improving, but we have a long way to go.
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