U. S. unemployment rate in March highest in 26 years
BY CARRIE MASON-DRAFFEN | carrie.mason-draffen@newsday.com
10:45 PM EDT, April 3, 2009
The country's longest-running postwar recession continues to wreak havoc on the national job market. The U.S. economy lost 663,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate shot up to a 26-year high of 8.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That jobless rate rose from 8.1 percent in February, and 5.1 percent in March of last year.
A revised January number of 741,000, up from 655,000, shows even faster month-to-month deterioration in the job market than first thought. Though initial Bureau of Labor Statistics reports can impact stock markets, the data are almost always revised.
The January job loss is the highest so far for this recession, which began in December 2007, and, at 17 months old, is the longest postwar downturn. All told the country has lost 5.1 million jobs since the recession began, more than half in the past five months. The number of unemployed stands at 13.2 million, compared with 7.7 million at the start of the recession.
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"Today's numbers show that we have more work to do," said U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
The job market has deteriorated so rapidly that some career experts are advising job seekers to consider new job-hunting strategies.
" . . . You can't look for a job the same way you used to," said Amy Friedman, chief executive of Partners International/OI Partners, a career-consulting and outplacement firm based in Manhattan.
Job seekers should market themselves as a brand name, she said.
"Personal branding is hugely important right now. I don't care if you are a truck driver, whatever," she said. You have to ask yourself, "Why do I stand out? What is my personal brand?" One example is having skills that are transferrable from one industry to another, such as selling.
She said that even her office's career coaches had to seek retraining on new strategies to help workers. For example, the coaches had to bone up on consulting as a career because it's increasingly a career choice for laid-off workers.
Coaches "need to know what consulting means," she said.
All the economy's sectors lost jobs last month except for health care, which added 14,000 jobs. But even that consistent job generator is slowing. Its monthly job growth averaged 17,000 in the first quarter of this year, compared with 30,000 a month in 2008, BLS said.
The manufacturing and construction sectors as well as the professional and business-services category led the job losers. More than half of the losses in professional and business services occurred among temporary staffing companies. That is significant because the industry is considered a bellwether of the job market's health.