There is good news and bad news – but mostly good news – on the jobs front.
Nationwide, 215,000 jobs were added in March, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
The unemployment rate ticked up from 4.9 percent to 5 percent, but that was due to more Americans re-entering the labor force and employees who are seeking other kinds of jobs, such as full-time ones.
A good share of the 215,000 jobs were in retail, construction and health care.
Average hourly wages were also up, by 2.3 percent during the past year. That is good news after the wage stagnation for so many years.
In a way, the good news is too much of a good thing. That’s because as the labor market has improved slowly but steadily, more people are rejoining the market, such as retirees looking for a bit of supplemental income, as well as workers once so discouraged they had quit seeking jobs that seemingly did not exist.
The Labor Department said brisk consumer spending and the housing recovery helped the surge in job creation.
What’s still problematic, however, is so many foreign economies are unstable currently, including China’s. In a globally entwined money system, that means the U.S. economy, too, could become shaky once again.
Some of the bad news is the manufacturing industry cut 29,000 jobs. And the worst part of the good news is it’s not so good for African-Americans and Hispanics whose unemployment rates hover at about 9 percent.
Still, overall, the job rate bodes well for the time being, and if it steadily improves it should boost job openings for more Americans, including minorities living in economically depressed areas.
During President Obama’s tenure, there have been more than 50 consecutive months of job gains. Of total job gains over time, however, Obama comes in fourth of the past six presidencies, with President Bill Clinton’s two terms having the highest job growth.
Job increases under Obama, however, are better than job-growth numbers under both Bush presidents combined. And, not to forget, Obama started his presidency just as the nation was teetering on a disastrous financial collapse caused mainly by criminally reckless Wall Street manipulators. So, in light of that, the economic turn-around, slow and herky-jerky as it has been, is very good news, indeed.
Let us hope, by the time summer begins, the economy kicks in like gangbusters and more Americans succeed in finding decent-paying jobs that will allow them to move, at long last, into some semblance of a middle-class life. That dream, deferred for so many, has been slipping drastically in the past few decades because of a lopsided economy that favors the 1 percent, as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is always quick to remind us.
Perhaps that trend – rich getting richer, poor getting poorer – is now reversing itself somewhat. Let’s hope so, because the hope and glory of America has always been dependent upon its promise that hard work and decent wages will allow all citizens to improve their lives.
