First, the good news: According to the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added 244,000 jobs in April, besting yesterday's projections by nearly 60,000 jobs. What's more, the BLS revised its number for February and March, adding 50,000 additional jobs to the total. The census months notwithstanding, this has been the best month for job creation since before the crash.
That said, good job growth didn't stop the unemployment rate from ticking upwards to 9 percent. This is a little mystifying; at 64.2 percent the civilian labor force participation rate remains unchanged from February and March, and the employment to population ratio -- which measures the proportion of working-aged people who are employed -- has only changed slightly, from 58.5 percent in March to 58.4 percent in April. There are both more jobs and the same number of people looking for jobs, which is supposed to result in a lower unemployment rate, not a higher one.
One last point: Good job growth also hasn't done much to alleviate the massive levels of joblessness within the African American and Latino communities, where unemployment is at 16.1 percent and 11.8 percent, respectively. At the risk of sounding cliche, the federal government has long since abdicated any responsibility for reinvigorating the economic life of these communities, and it shows in these staggeringly high numbers.
Update: David Leonhardt explains why unemployment rose despite 244,000 new jobs:
It doesn’t actually mean unemployment rose last month. Instead, it reflects a kind of statistical catch-up. The old picture of the job market, as presented by the household survey, had been too optimistic. (Did anyone really believe that the job market recently improved at its most rapid two-month pace since the 1950s, as the unemployment rate suggested?) Today’s report helps correct the picture. This is simply the nature of surveys: they have noise in them.
