+290k April Jobs, 9.9% Unemployment. Rates Pare Yesterday’s Gains In Volatile Trading. (CHARTS)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics non-farm payroll report showed that the economy added 290,000 private sector jobs in April. The job loss toll since the recession began in December 2007 at 7.72 million, but this is the biggest monthly gain in four years, and the U.S. has added 573k jobs since January. Bond markets that rates are tied to were up as much as 34 basis points earlier today (continuing yesterday’s reaction to European debt woes) and are now down about 25bps (a reaction more in line with this better economic news)—wild volatility continues. For now, rates are about net even after yesterday’s gains. BLS also reported that 15.3 million people are unemployed. This is a 9.9% unemployment rate, up 5% since the recession began in December 2007. See charts and additional commentary on the U.S.’s 9.2m involuntary part-timer workers below.

Additionally there are now 9.2 million people who would like to work full time but are working part time because their hours have been cut or they can’t find full-time jobs. This forced-into-part-time-work category is up 4.3m million since January 2008. It decreased 900k in January (at the time, it was the first decrease in nine months), then increased by 800k in the two months before April, then was flat in April. This is the fine print of the jobs report—the headline job loss and unemployment statistics show that these 9.2 million people are employed and therefore not in the job loss category, but because of their job status these 9.2 million workers aren’t likely to be consuming at normal levels. This poor statistic in the jobs report is mostly unreported and trading decisions don’t seem to be made on this figure. But until there’s movement here, a sustained recovery seems hard to achieve.
CHART 1: MONTHLY JOB GAIN/LOSS DECEMBER 2007 TO APRIL 2010

CHART 2: APRIL 2010 JOBS BY SECTOR

CHART 3: JOB LEVELS JANUARY 2000 TO APRIL 2010