With today’s employment report showing a gain of 162,000 jobs for March, I thought it would be useful to break these jobs gains down by industry sector. The table below does so and also shows the cumulative change in jobs over the previous three months as well as the December 2007 – December 2009 period.
A couple of things to note. First, it is interesting that the 162,000 jobs gained in March is equal to the total number of jobs gained during the past three months of January, February, and March. Second, it is encouraging to see the four industries hit hardest during the recession–construction, durable goods manufacturing, professional & business services, and retail trade–had jobs gains in March and all but one of them have had job gains over the past three months as well. Third, the financial activities sector (i.e. FIRE in NFP) continues to lose jobs and has done so over the past three months.
For a broader perspective I have graphed below the cumulative percent change in employment since December 2007 per industry sector.
Leave a Reply