+162k Jobs in March, 9.7% Unemployment. -8.13m Jobs Since Dec 07. Rates Jump .25% on Less Census Hiring. (CHARTS)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics non-farm payroll report showed that the economy added 162,000 private sector jobs in March. Twenty-four of the last 28 months have shown losses, putting the job loss toll since the recession began in December 2007 at 8.131 million. But this is the biggest monthly gain in three years. Bond markets that rates are tied to are selling off wildly today since the Federal government only hired 48k workers for Census instead of about 75k expected—these temporary workers are counted on this jobs report. The result is that rates are higher by about .25%. BLS also reported that 15 million people are unemployed. This is a 9.7% unemployment rate, up 4.8% since the recession began in December 2007. See charts and additional commentary on the U.S.’s 9.1m involuntary part-timer workers below.

Additionally there are now 9.1 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 4.4m million since January 2008, and increased by 300k this month and 500k last month, offsetting a big drop in January. January’s drop from 9.2m to 8.3m was the first improvement in nine months. This is the fine print of the jobs report—the headline job loss and unemployment statistics show that these 9.1 million people are employed and therefore not in the job loss category, but because of their job status these 9.1 million workers aren’t likely to be consuming at normal levels. This poor statistic in the jobs report is mostly unreported and certainly no trading decisions are being made on it so far today.
CHART 1: MONTHLY JOB GAIN/LOSS JANUARY 2008 TO MARCH 2010

CHART 2: MARCH 2010 JOBS BY SECTOR

CHART 3: JOB LEVELS JANUARY 2000 TO MARCH 2010