Employment: Update April 2011

Gradually we have become habituated to the sluggish nature of this recovery, hence, my guess, no one expected much for April and the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered—not much in the way of good news. Employment in April went up 244,000, but fell short of the March advance which, modified this month, had been 262,000. In the 2008-2009 period we lost a total of 8.66 million jobs. Since January 1, 2010, we have recovered 1.7 million of that loss, or 19.7 percent. Gains, of course, are better than losses, but the mood, folks, isn’t right yet. Still not. Herewith the updated graphics—first the month-to-month changes and then the pie chart. The pie chart shows, as a circle, the jobs lost and the slice shows the jobs regained. Last month the slice was 16.9 percent. If the monthly gain we’ve just experienced (2.8%) holds in the future, we can expect to have recovered all of the jobs lost in 2008-2009 by May 2014.

The data shown are from the BLS press release found here.