Jobs report shows professional jobs growing steadily

Jobs report shows professional jobs growing steadilyJobs report shows professional jobs growing steadilyThe Bureau of Labor Statistics released the April 2017 jobs report last week, showing some surprising good news Despite reports of layoffs at many major companies, employment in business and professional services continued to rise last month, andits been rising for the past year.Its important to note that there is a large margin of error, and that one of the surveys goes through revisions after initial data for the month is released.The big question Whats the unemployment rate?According to the April 2017 jobs report,both the unemployment rate, at 4.4 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.1 1000000, changed little in April. Over the year, the unemployment rate has declined by 0.6 percentage point, and the number of unemployed has abfallen by 854,000.Mark Hamrick, Bankrate.coms senior economic analyst,put this in perspective for Ladders.Referring to that 4.4% level, he said, theoretically, the lower the unemployment rate goes, the more challenging it becomes to keep growth going. Hamrick added, The recovery began eight years ago- were now in the third-longest recovery period since the end of World War II. Were definitely at the low end of the unemployment rate spectrum.The New York Timesalso reported that the 4.4% rate was down from 4.5 percent in March and the lowest rate in more than 10 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.The professional and business services supersector gets a boostIf this sounds like a pretty broad category to you, youre right. Thats because its made up of three whole sectors, namelyProfessional, Scientific, and Technical Services, Management of Companies and Enterprises, and Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services.The number of people getting jobs in professional and business services went up by 39,000 jobs last month, and 612,000 jobs in the last year.Hamrick toldLadders about whats going on in this area.We need business and professional services to do a lot of the heavy lifting of job creation because many people have those skill sets, he said, adding, The US economy is largely reliant on services and thats why weve seen people moving away from the traditional Rust Belt, referring to various manufacturing jobs.More gains across the boardSome industries hired more job seekers than others. Nonfarm payroll jobs, or non-agricultural jobs,went upby a whopping211,000 last month.In April, leisure and hospitality went up by 55,000 jobs, health care and social assistance by 37,000, financial activities by 19,000 jobs, and mining by 9,000 jobs.There was a good cross-section of sectors hiring in the April jobs report, business and professional services as well as health care among them. The goods-producing sector continues to be a work in progress. Construction, manufacturing and mining/logging all were in the plus column, which is good to see, Hamrick said in an emailed statement.What didnt change much last monthOther than the unemployment rate (4.4%) and number of unemployed persons (7.1 million), here are just some of the areas where no drastic changes happened in April 2017.According to the report, employment in other major industries, including construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, transportation and warehousing, information, and government, showed little change over the month.Unlike the unemployment rate for adult men, which dippedto 4% in April, thejobless rates for certain groups didnt change muchadult women had a 4.1% rate, Blacks had a 7.9% rate, Hispanics had a 5.2% rate, Whites had a 3.8% rate, Asians had a 3.2% rate, and teens had a 14.7% rate.As for the number of people who were out of work for at least 27 weeks (called the long-term unemployed) the report said that the amount was essentially unchanged at 1.6 million in April and accounted for 22.6% of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployed was down by 433,000.