Payrolls fall 663,000 in March while unemployment rate jumps to 8.5%
American workers were hammered again in March with large job losses, pushing the total number of jobs lost since the recession began to 5.1 million, the Labor Department reported Friday.
U.S. nonfarm payrolls fell by 663,000 in March, close to expectations, while the unemployment rate jumped to 8.5% as expected from 8.1%. Payrolls in previous months were revised lower by a total of 86,000.
January's revised job loss of 741,000 was the worst since 1949. In February, 651,000 jobs were lost.
In the past six months, 3.7 million jobs have been lost, or 2.7%, the second-largest percentage loss in 50 years.
Total hours worked in the economy fell by 1%. The average workweek fell by 6 minutes to a record-low 33.2 hours.
Job losses were widespread across industries, with only health-care showing a small gain of 14,000.
According to a survey of hundreds of thousands of work sites, goods-producing industries shed 305,000 jobs, and the services industries cut 358,000. Of 271 industries, just 22% were hiring in March.
Manufacturing industries cut 126,000 workers. Hours worked in manufacturing fell by 2.1%. Construction cut 161,000 jobs. The unemployment rate for construction workers rose to 22.3%.
In the services, professional and business services cut 133,000 jobs, including 72,000 temp jobs. Retail companies cut 48,000 jobs. Financial services cut 43,000 jobs. Transportation industries lost 34,000.
The separate survey of households showed employment dropped by 861,000, with unemployment rising by 694,000 to 13.2 million. The employment-population ratio dropped to 59.9%. The unemployment rate of 8.5% is the highest since November 1983.
A separate gauge of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and workers who can find only part-time work rose to a record 15.6%, with data reached back only to 1994.
The number of workers who want full-time work but can only find part-time jobs rose by 423,000 to 9 million in March.
