Payroll employment was up 288,000 units in April for a substantial .4% drop in the unemployment rate from March, which now sits at an impressive 6.3%. This was led by employment in construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and mining fields.
The number of unemployed persons sits at 9.8 million, down 733,000 and the first time the figure has been below the 10 million mark in over 10 years. Meanwhile, those jobless for 27 weeks or more was at 3.5 million, down significantly from March. These individuals accounted for 35% of the unemployed, a figure which has declined 908,000 over the prior year.
Total employment, as measured by the household survey, increased by 288,000 over
the month, and the employment-population ratio increased by 0.2 percentage point to 58.8%. Those employed part time for economic reasons fell by 514,000 to 7.3 million in January. Meanwhile, 786,000 persons were marginally attached to the labor force. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
