Sean Walsh - Job Market

http://www.marketwatch.com/economy-politics WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Nonfarm payrolls grew by a seasonally adjusted 216,000 in March, their fastest pace since last May, the Labor Department said Friday, in an indication of an improving labor market. According to the survey of 400,000 business establishments, private-sector payrolls increased by 230,000 jobs after rising by 240,000 in February, marking the first time that private-sector job gains have been over 200,000 for two straight months in five years. Read “More jobs, but wages aren’t keeping up.” The payrolls growth came in stronger than the 185,000 increase expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch. See our calendar with forecasts of major indicators. Financial markets took the report as a positive sign for the outlook. “If we continue to see reports like this, the Fed could tighten as early as first quarter 2012,” said Ethan Harris, head of developed markets economics research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Some Fed officials themselves said the tightening could come this year. Read how Dudley and Plosser set boundaries of Fed debate. The U.S. employment report indicated 216,000 job were added in March, bringing the nation's unemployment rate down to 8.8% and further pointing to a continued recovery. The nation’s unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 8.8% in March from 8.9% in February, according to a separate survey of 60,000 households. This is the lowest unemployment rate since March 2009. Economists had been expecting the jobless rate to inch higher to 9.0%. The rate has declined sharply from 9.8% last November. “The speed of the decline in the unemployment rate already is putting pessimists to shame,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics. Unemployment dropped by 131,000 to 13.5 million for March, while employment rose by 291,000 to 139.9 million. An alternate measure of employment, which includes discouraged workers and those forced to work part-time because of the weak economy, fell to 15.7% from 15.9%. There was only a small cumulative 7,000 upward revision to payrolls count in January and February. Payrolls rose by a revised 194,000 in February and by 68,000 in January. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are many parts of this article that relate to the material we study in class. For starters, the article begins by stating what trend was occurring in the current job market and what factors effect this up or down slide in percentage points, correlating almost exactly to the first chapters we covered where we learned about the different kinds of markets and the things that can effect them. The article then began to explain what the rise of fall meant in more detail. For example, how a rise or fall in a rate can either be insignificant or extremely drastic, how a rise or fall can either be good or bad for a market, or if the change is just the market’s adaptation to an event that effects it now or an event that effected and changed it in the past. In a simplistic way, this article greatly correlates to our fundamental principle of supply and demand. With this work shortage, and by work shortage the term means a shortage of work that gets done or is wanted to be accomplished. There is a great rise in the supply of individuals who want to work, but there is a great decline in the demand for work to be accomplished. Meaning, many people want to work because they no longer have jobs, but with finances so tight, no one wants to pay for any work to be accomplished; instead they just save the money. The article also briefly covers the adaptation of one market to another. Meaning, when a supply market is affected, what are the changes to the demand market and vice versa. In this instance, both the markets for supply of workers and demand for work were affected. By looking at it in the way that supply of workers rises, demand would fall naturally to adjust itself, but with the economic crisis, it changes even more because those controlling the demand market for work change their usual patterns of finance. Finally, this article goes into the distinction between employment and unemployment in context of the current job market. While in this month that the article describes, employment rose by 291,000, the unemployment rate did not dip by the same amount, which seems very odd at first. Unlike the 291,000 that the employment rate rose, the unemployment rate dropped by only 131,000, which means that more people picked up new or other jobs than the 131,000 that were lost of the unemployment status.