National Unemployment Rate Drops to 8.8%

Employers added 216,000 jobs to their payrolls in March, ""according to figures released Friday morning"":http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm by the U.S. Department of Labor. The national unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent, down from 8.9 percent in February.

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Analysts had been forecasting a smaller pool of new jobs and no change in the unemployment rate. Since November 2010, the jobless rate has declined by a full percentage point.

According to Keith Hall, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the last five months, unemployment has declined by nearly 1.5 million, however, the figures

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indicate that at least a portion of people who were unemployed simply gave up the job search.

In Hall’s words, the labor force is “nearly unchanged on net,” after accounting for the population adjustment made in January when the revised unemployment rate slid to the 9 percent mark.

The government agency's count shows there are currently 13.5 million people out of work. Forty-five percent of this group have been unemployed for 27 months or more.

“Conditions in the U.S. labor market are finally starting to show signs of meaningful improvement,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for the research firm ""Capital Economics"":http://www.capitaleconomics.com, in commentary issued just after the numbers were released.

The national unemployment rate of 8.8 percent is the lowest it’s been in two years. Ashworth described the recent gains as “healthy” and “encouraging,” but he says even with monthly employment gains around the 200,000 mark â€" an obvious improvement from what the market’s seen up until now in this recovery â€" job growth still isn't strong enough to bring the unemployment rate down rapidly.

“If the rate is only falling by 0.1 percent each month, it would take another three and a half years to get back down to the pre-recession level,” Ashworth explained.