U.S. Added More Jobs Than Expected

The labor market continues to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first full monthly employment report under President Biden, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. added 379,000 jobs last month. That is considerably higher than the 210,000 jobs expected by economists. There was not much change in the unemployment rate — which fell to 6.2% from January’s 6.3%. However, the unemployment rate is reportedly higher for African Americans (9.9%) and Latinx (8.5%) than Whites (5.6%) and Asian/Pacific (5.1%).

Although the economy has been adding jobs, one news commentator suggested that “those gains mask the extent to which the labor market is still being held back.” The numbers do not reflect those kept home by childcare responsibilities, health concerns, or a lack of job opportunities in fields devastated by the pandemic.

According to the Washington Post, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that the real unemployment rate might be closer to 10% or 11%. This discrepancy is, in part, because the number reported as the unemployment rate does not include those that were not actively looking for work during the last four weeks or were unavailable to take a job.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), which is 4.1 million, changed little over the month. In February, these long-term unemployed accounted for 41.5 percent of the total unemployed. The number of persons jobless less than five weeks (2.2 million) also changed little over the month.

No matter how you look at it, there are still a lot of Americans out of work. It appears that the situation may not get better until more people are vaccinated. When this happens, people may begin to feel comfortable about going back to work and resuming leisure activities which means more businesses can reopen and rehire staff.

What’s the current job situation like at your library/organization? Are you currently hiring, or has all hiring been frozen? Please take our short survey to let us know. We’ll report general findings in the next issue of Library Worklife. 

Posted in Statistics |Comments Off on U.S. Added More Jobs Than Expected