The March unemployment numbers are out, and they are favorable: 216,000 jobs created, following a month in which 214,000 were created. The trend line is unmistakably positive, especially since all of the job creation is in the private sector. But these are only good numbers relative to the horrific numbers of the past three years. (You can see a chart of monthly job creation in the United States here; you can adjust it back 50 years.) Given the growth in the size of the American population, producing a little in excess of 200,000 jobs a month will not be enough to bring the unemployment rate back to a level at which the newly employed can—through their own economic activity—help to lower the rate still further. It’s still the case that the overall unemployment rate, which fell a tenth of a point to 8.8 percent, continues to fall less because of job creation than the continuing fact that people are dropping out of the workforce altogether. As Jim Pethokoukis tweeted this morning, “labor force participation is at the lowest point in 27 years,” with less than 65 percent of the able-bodied gainfully employed.
The political impact of this will be interesting; it’s hard to predict, really. As always, the issue for a president in a troubled economy is not what the statistics say but what the American people feel. If they feel as though the economy is in recovery and it cheers them, it will be of immense benefit to Obama. If, however, that’s not the feeling—if even among the comfortably employed, rising gas and food prices combine with the fact that the value of their house may still be underwater to make them feel uncertain about the future—a slowly declining unemployment rate isn’t likely to make much of a difference.
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