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March's employment numbers are in. The first month of substantial job growth in this recovery (except for the blip in November): payroll employment +162,000, unemployment rate unchanged at 9.7%. Consensus forecast was around +200,000, I was hoping for (I had been led to believe!) something in the range of +250,000 to +300,000, so it's not as good as expected. On the other hand:
(1) In the grand scheme of things, the recovery in employment is still pretty impressive and a lot more like 1983-84 than 1991-92 or 2002-03. The reason it's taken so long to get to jobs growth is that the recession was so dang severe. Look at the slope of the lines in recoveries:
(2) The household numbers are much better than the payroll numbers. One possible explanation is that the household numbers pick up increases in self-employment and in employment in new businesses that the payroll numbers miss. Household employment was up 264,000 in March and up 1.1 million since December (though the household employment numbers were more dramatic on the way down as well.) But the household numbers show the same dramatic recovery story as the payroll numbers do.
(3) Part of the reason the payroll number was lower than expected is that Census employment was lower than expected (+48,000 instead of the expected +100,000). Private-sector employment growth, at +123,000, was actually stronger than expected.
(4) One reason employment has not grown much during the recovery is that the average work week is rising instead. Average weekly hours has been increasing since November even as the number of employees has been falling. By comparison, in the "jobless recovery" following the 2001 recession, average weekly hours didn't start rising until mid-2003.
The obvious take (a la Krugman): +162,000 jobs is better than a kick in the teeth, but short of the level that would signify a truly strong recovery. But we're on the way there.
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