Job Gain/Loss by Sector, March 2012

Herewith the employment change from February to March in a somewhat different format. I am showing actual employment in the two months, the gain or loss, and then the percent gain or loss in each of the sectors. The sectors are sorted by percent gain.

Employment Change by Sector	(Values in 000 or %)
Sector	February	March	Gain/Loss
	2012	2012	Value	%
Total non-farm	132,701	132,821	120	0.09
Total Private	110,703	110,824	121	0.11
Manufacturing	11,891	11,928	37	0.31
Leisure and Hospitality	13,548	13,587	39	0.29
Utilities	561	562	1.2	0.21
Financial Activities	7,706	7,721	15	0.19
Education and Health Services	20,176	20,213	37	0.18
Professional and Business Services	17,758	17,789	31	0.17
Mining	834	835	1	0.12
Wholesale Trade	5,590	5,594	4.1	0.07
Transportation and Warehousing	4,353	4,356	2.8	0.06
Other Services	5,359	5,362	3	0.06
Government	21,998	21,997	-1	0.00
Construction	5,558	5,551	-7	-0.13
Retail Trade	14,728	14,694	-33.8	-0.23
Information	2,641	2,632	-9	-0.34

This view of things shows that Retail, which sustained the largest losses, did a little better than the Information sector (that’s the media and publishing). Manufacturing did better than the Education/Health, although both gained the same number of jobs.

That overall growth rate of 0.09 percent in one month suggests that, if it remains in place, it will take 29 months (August 2014), before we shall have once more achieved the employment level we had at the end of 2007. Meanwhile, of course, the workforce has grown. Those two years remind me of the Pharaoh’s dream that Joseph interpreted as meaning seven lean years in Genesis 41.

The tabulation is also interesting in that it shows the relative importance of the sectors.  Government is our largest employer—and it is that because virtually our entire educational sector falls into that category. The Education and Health Services sector, which includes non-government education, is dominated by the health sector. Combined into layers, these data produce my favorite pyramid or children’s “top”:

Here I’ve added an agriculture sector, not present in the table, using a 5 million employment figure; it somewhat overstates the total. I call this a top because it’s top-heavy and stays in balance only by the vigorous application of a whip. We live in an amazingly rich country considering that most of our consumption is not, strictly speaking, of the basic and necessary kind. And hence we can lose 8.7 million jobs and keep on trucking.