April offers modest employment growth
Posted on April 29th, 2012 Read time: 1 minutes
According to the most recent jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department, the economy will have added 175,000 jobs by the end of April, The Associated Press reports. This is down from the average of 250,000 positions added each month from December through February, although it was slightly above March figures.
One conclusion economists have jumped to in order to explain the dip is the weather.
"The warm winter made perhaps January and February artificially strong and March perhaps artificially a little bit weak," said Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, as quoted by the news source. "I wouldn't draw too much conclusion from the March report."
The national unemployment rate fell from 9.1 percent in August to 8.2 percent today. However, a major reason for the dip was the fact that more people had given up looking for full-time, part-time or temporary worker positions, and thus weren't counted among the unemployed.
Applications for unemployment stood at a seasonally adjusted 388,000 last week, the highest figure since January 7.
Some states' unemployment rates are higher than others. For instance, WRAL-TV reports that North Carolina's figure was at 9.7 percent in March – down from 9.9 percent in February.
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Posted on April 29th, 2012 Read time: 1 minutes
According to the most recent jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department, the economy will have added 175,000 jobs by the end of April, The Associated Press reports. This is down from the average of 250,000 positions added each month from December through February, although it was slightly above March figures.
One conclusion economists have jumped to in order to explain the dip is the weather.
"The warm winter made perhaps January and February artificially strong and March perhaps artificially a little bit weak," said Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, as quoted by the news source. "I wouldn't draw too much conclusion from the March report."
The national unemployment rate fell from 9.1 percent in August to 8.2 percent today. However, a major reason for the dip was the fact that more people had given up looking for full-time, part-time or temporary worker positions, and thus weren't counted among the unemployed.
Applications for unemployment stood at a seasonally adjusted 388,000 last week, the highest figure since January 7.
Some states' unemployment rates are higher than others. For instance, WRAL-TV reports that North Carolina's figure was at 9.7 percent in March – down from 9.9 percent in February.
