American swagger

7 May 2010 By Martin Hutchinson

Despite the uptick in the unemployment rate, healthy job creation underlines the economy’s resurgence in a tough world. Along with productivity growth, that shows the benefit of the U.S. labor market’s flexibility and its competitiveness even in the face of a weak euro.

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U.S. nonfarm payroll employment rose by 290,000 in April, the second successive strong month. February's change was revised to 39,000 jobs gained from 14,000 jobs lost, while the March gain was revised to 230,000 jobs created from 162,000.

The unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 9.9 percent. Longterm unemployment more than 26 weeks rose to 6.72 million. The number of discouraged workers rose to 1.2 million, against 534,000 at the previous cyclical peak in August 2004.

Of the 290,000 new jobs, 66,000 were temporary census workers, leaving a net 224,000 noncensus new hires. On a seasonally adjusted basis, manufacturing employment increased by 44,000, temporary jobs by 26,000, healthcare employment by 20,000 and leisure and hospitality posts by 45,000. Transportation and warehousing jobs declined by 20,000.

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity rose at a 3.6 percent annual rate in the first quarter with output rising at 4.4 percent and hours worked by 0.8 percent. In the year to March, output increased 3.1 percent while hours worked fell by 3.0 percent yielding an increase in productivity of 6.3 percent.

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