Jeremy Peavey
18 April 2014
Econ 122 Blog Post 2
Dr. Kassens
The
Employment Situation
In
the March Employment Situation Report, the unemployment rate remained at 6.7%
which has seen minimal movement since December 2013. Despite unemployment rate remaining constant,
the private sector has added 8.9 million jobs over 49 straight months. In March, nonfarm payroll employment rose by
192,000 in March as a result of increased private employment. Seasonally adjusted payroll employment, has
been positive since the first quarter of January 2010. Over the past 12 months, private employment
has risen by 2.3 million. At an increase
of 189,000 jobs per month over the past twelve-month period, this is slightly
higher than the 175,000 jobs created per month during the previous twelve-month
period. It is expected that this trend
will continue or level-off in the next twelve-month period. The majority of private sector jobs created
were seen in professional and business services, in healthcare, and in mining
and logging. In March, 57,000
professional and business services jobs, 19,000 healthcare jobs, and over 7,000
mining and logging jobs were added.
Trends in other employment areas with increasing jobs tended to continue
with steady increases in the month of March.
Across
different groups, there remains to be highest levels of unemployment for those
16 to 17 years old (20.9%), 18 to 19 years old (20.7%), and Black or African
American (12.4%). As one would expect,
teens have the highest unemployment rates and also the lowest labor force participation
rates. Racial disparities are quite
striking here. The proportion of Blacks
in the labor force is significantly less than those of whites. This could be caused by lower amounts of
black teens being able to obtain employment.
While white teens are in the labor force, they are gaining skills and
experience that will help them later as adult job market participants. Inability to obtain a job in a Black’s teen
years could be harming their employment chances for the future. This factor could be in direct correlation
with the high unemployment rate seen for the entire Black race.
The
employment-population ratio (58.9%) and the labor force participation rate
(63.2%) both changed very little through March. Since March of 2013, the
employment-population ratio increased only 0.04%. This statistic has remained relatively the
same over the past year because slight increases in the population have been
balanced by slight increase in the number of individuals employed. Over the past year, the U.S. civilian
noninstitutional population increased from 244,995 to 247,258 (in thousands),
and employment went from 143,393 to 145,742.
As a constituent of the employment population, labor force participation
rate remained stable also. Increases in
population size were balanced by increases in the labor force.
For
the rest of 2014, I expect that the labor force trends seen in March will
continue to increase as we continue to recover from the recession. The cyclic nature of employment trends leads
me to believe that within the near future, we may start to see leveling-off of
these trends and possible returns to previous ratios. As seen this month, unemployment rate
remained the same after steady decreases since the end of the recession. It would not be surprising if the
unemployment rate remained at the current level for some time before going back
up.
References
The Employment Situation – March 2014. Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Retrieved
from: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
Mankiw, Gregory. (2012). Principles of Macroeconomics:
Sixth Edition. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
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