Unemployment Rate

WASHINGTON -- The economy generated fewer jobs than expected in April, the Labor Department reported yesterday, but many analysts said the job market remains tight enough to drive up hiring later this year. "Employers are going to continue to hire. They will be hiring at a slower pace this year than they were last year, but they'll keep hiring," said Nigel Gault, U.S. economist for Global Insight in Waltham, Mass. "The labor market will probably stay quite tight, and there's still going to be a problem for employers looking around for skills."

WASHINGTON -- U.S. companies added jobs at a stronger-than-expected pace in February without an inflationary increase in wages, offering relief to stock and bond investors apprehensive that the Federal Reserve might push interest rates higher.The economy created 275,000 jobs last month, exceeding analysts' forecasts of a gain of 244,000 and January's increase of 217,000, Labor Department figures showed yesterday, drawing from a survey of employers. A surge in retail and construction hiring was tempered by a drop in factory payrolls.

Maryland's economy finished 1998 with a flourish, adding 6,000 jobs in December and driving the state's unemployment rate down to 3.8 percent, its lowest point in almost a decade, the government said yesterday.It was more persuasive evidence that Maryland is fully sharing in the thumping national prosperity that has erased government deficits, employed the jobless, made homebuilders work weekends and lifted the stock market to once-unimaginable heights."It just looks very, very good," said Charles McMillion, an economist who follows Maryland for MBG Information Services Inc., a Washington-based forecasting and consulting firm.

Maryland's unemployment rate edged up to 4.4 percent in February from 4 percent in January, but state officials noted yesterday that the rate remains significantly lower than the 5.4 percent level in February 1998.Seasonal employment declines and an increase in the number of job seekers primarily caused the rate to increase in February, according to the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, which released the figures yesterday."We are optimistic that record high employment levels will continue and job opportunities in several industries will continue to increase as spring weather approaches," said state Labor Secretary John P. O'Connor in a statement.

IF YOU had custom-designed a labor market fit to welcome the 2,000th year of the Christian era, you could hardly have improved on the one recently profiled by the U.S. Department of Labor.In its final employment report of the year, the government reported a November unemployment rate that held steady at 4.1 percent, the lowest in 29 years. Non-farm employment grew by a brisk 234,000 jobs. The service sector alone added 120,000 jobs, and factory employment, which had shrunk earlier in the year, held steady -- a sign that resurgent foreign demand may be stemming the erosion in that sector.

Strong job growth continued to buoy spending during Maryland's second quarter, making the cash register ring and allowing home and car sales to set records.Higher interest rates and somewhat satiated consumers could tap the brakes on higher-dollar purchases during the current quarter and the fourth quarter to come. But fear not: Local economists expect the markets of Baltimore and Maryland to keep motoring, partly because a tremendous appetite for new workers is driving up wages and making more money available to spend.

Strong growth in construction, real estate and the service sector pushed Maryland's unemployment rate down to 3.9 percent in July -- that month's lowest rate since 1970.Maryland fared better than the nation as a whole, where the unemployment rate was unchanged in July at 4.5 percent, according to the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.Because the number of people seeking seasonal work generally rises in the summer and can drive up the unemployment level, the low July figures "suggest that demand for seasonal summertime workers is at an almost unprecedented level in Maryland," said Anirban Basu, senior economist with the Regional Economic Studies Institute, a research institute at Towson University.

The percentage of Marylanders without jobs inched higher in May, but, thanks to the economic boom, the unemployment rate was still the lowest for the month in 10 years, state officials announced yesterday.About 3.6 percent of the state's work force was unemployed in May, up from 3.5 percent in April, according to the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. But the unemployment rate is still a full percentage point lower than last year, and the lowest for May since 1989.State officials mainly attribute the slight increase to the seasonal influx of summer workers, which swelled the state's labor force in May by 17,400 people, to nearly 2.8 million.

Maryland's unemployment rate slipped to 3.7 percent in March and remained near its lowest point of the decade, as the state's economy continued to add jobs and boost incomes, new government statistics showed yesterday.The March seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was slightly lower than February's 3.8 percent but higher than January's 3.6 percent, which was the best monthly unemployment rate since August 1989, according to the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation."This is the strongest Maryland has looked this decade," said Anirban Basu, an economist who follows the state for RESI, an economics and consulting institute at Towson University.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve policy-makers might raise interest rates again because the U.S. economy could be growing too quickly, raising the risk that inflation is likely to accelerate, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told the Senate Banking Committee yesterday in the second of his semiannual reports on the economy and monetary policy.Greenspan, however, offered little elaboration on his warning -- identical to one he gave the House Banking Committee last week -- because senators were more interested in dragging the central bank head into an argument over tax policy.

Maryland's unemployment rate returned to 7.2 percent last month after dipping to 7.1 percent in August, the federal government said Wednesday. The state's unemployment rate was also 7.2 percent in May, June and July, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's revised estimates. It's a plateau of sorts after a rapid worsening in the job market that began a year ago, pushing Maryland's rate from a relatively low 4.6 percent the previous September to the current 26-year high. But job losses have continued.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and the Dow Jones average feels fine. So do Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and much of the rest of Wall Street. American International Group has a few sniffles, but nothing that the $198 million in bonuses employees stand to collect won't assuage. The fortunes of Wall Street have never been a precise indicator of national welfare. But tell me the last time the gorge between plutocrats and ordinary Americans was this wide. Unemployment is 9.8 percent.

As the nation prepares to salute working people this Labor Day weekend, Matthew McCaffery is in no mood to celebrate. In better times, McCaffery served prime rib to three U.S. presidents, brought cocktails to congressmen and senators and found private booths for Supreme Court justices wary of the public eye. He was a senior waiter for 12 years at The Prime Rib in Washington. But McCaffery, 48, has been jobless for 13 months. Decades of working on his feet have left him with a bum knee that now requires surgery, and his work history doesn't wow restaurant owners like it used to. McCaffery is one of about 5 million Americans who have gone at least six months without a job. That's more than twice the number of those who had been jobless that long a year ago. And it's the highest number since the Labor Department started measuring such things after World War II. These long-term jobless workers now make up more than a third of the nation's 14.5 million unemployed workers, and their plight has become a signature trait of the recession.

Losses in the job market are finally showing real signs of moderating. But as with most other economic data these days, Friday's employment report sent mixed messages, suggesting that while the economy may be bottoming out, recovery will likely be slow, fitful and frustrating. The Department of Labor reported that the U.S. economy lost 247,000 jobs in July while the unemployment rate dipped to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent. That was the smallest monthly decline in jobs since last August and provided clear evidence that the longer-term pace of job erosion is slowing markedly.

WASHINGTON - -Even as the nation's economy begins clawing its way out of the worst recession in 60 years, there are growing signs that this recovery could come with an unsettling twist: The wheels of commerce may begin to turn again without any substantial boost in jobs. Not only is the unemployment rate - now 9.4 percent - likely to climb into double digits, it is expected to remain there well into next year or possibly longer, economists say, prolonging the misery of the unemployed, squeezing retailers and other businesses, and adding millions of dollars in government costs and lost productivity.

Unemployment in Maryland topped 7 percent in May, reaching a more than 25-year high as joblessness rose in 48 states and experts said the worst is far from over. The jobless rate hit 7.2 percent in Maryland, up from 4.1 percent in May 2008, preliminary government figures released Friday showed. Economists say joblessness is expected to rise well into next year. "There is always a lag in terms of economic recovery in output and employment, and this recovery is expected to be slower," said Mohammad Iqbal, an economist with IHS Global Insight.

The Baltimore area is doing better than the nation on average during an economy that is resulting in widespread job losses, corporate downsizing and plummeting homes sales across the country, according to a study being released Wednesday by the Brookings Institution. The study examined six factors, including unemployment, wages, housing prices and gross metropolitan product, in the 100 largest metro areas and found that Baltimore has fared better than the national average in each category.

WASHINGTON - -The nation's breathtaking pace of job loss slowed significantly in May, bolstering hopes that the worst of the current recession is over, but millions of Americans and their families face continued economic pain with the unemployment rate jumping to 9.4 percent. And wages remained essentially flat, the government reported. The contrasting trends underscore a painful economic reality: Even as the recession winds down, hundreds of thousands of workers may continue to lose their jobs - and the unemployed might be among the last to reap the benefits of recovery.

Job losses in Maryland slowed in April with unemployment dipping slightly to 6.8 percent, but economists cautioned it's too early to hope for a recovery. The state's jobless rate, adjusted for seasonal changes, fell to 6.8 percent in April, according to preliminary figures released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor. That's compared with 6.9 percent in March, a nearly 17-year-high. "The important thing is job gains and losses," said Charles W. McMillion, president and economist at MBG Information Services in Washington, noting the dip in the state's rate is likely a seasonal fluctuation.

Washington - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke didn't sway the markets much Tuesday with his cautious optimism about an economic recovery later this year, and he downright chilled U.S. workers with his prediction of "further sizable job losses" to come. In his most positive view of the economy since the financial crisis began, Bernanke told Congress that the deep recession was easing. But he warned that growth would be slow and unemployment would continue to rise, dashing any hopes that last month's jobless figures, to be released on Friday, would be less than dismal.