663k Jobs Lost In March, 5.1m Lost Since January 2008 (Charts), Unemployment Up To 8.5%

The Bureau of Labor Statistics March non-farm payroll report showed that the economy lost 663,000 private sector jobs in March. This is the fifteenth straight month of losses, putting the job loss toll since January 2008 at almost 5.1 million, with 3.3 million of these job losses occurring in the last five months. This is the first time since records began in 1939 that job losses were higher than 500k for five consecutive months. BLS also reported that 13.2 million people are unemployed. This is an 8.5% unemployment rate, up 3.6% from a year ago. See charts below.

Making these numbers all the more serious is the fact that there are now 9 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 1,219,000 February and March and up 4.1 million over the last 12 months. This is the fine print of the jobs report—the headline job loss and unemployment statistics show that these 9 million people are employed and therefore not in the job loss category, but these 9 million workers are just hanging on.

Chart 1 below shows which industries jobs were lost or gained last month. Chart 2 shows percent change in private sector jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Here is the full March jobs report.

CHART 1: MARCH 2009 JOBS BY SECTOR

CHART 3: PERCENT CHANGE IN JOBS SINCE RECESSION BEGAN
Total nonfarm employment peaked in December 2007, coinciding with the start of the recession as declared by the NBER. With the recent acceleration of job losses, nonfarm employment has fallen by 5.1 million since its peak, with about two-thirds of the loss coming in the past 5 months.