Manufacturing

Today’s release of March jobs data brought far less exciting news than February. The economy added only 88,000 jobs last month, less than 30% of which went to women and unemployment rates were little changed for adult women and men, hovering around 7 percent.

Here are the numbers that stood out to me as we crunched the numbers for today’s NWLC analysis:

• 25,000: That’s the number of jobs women gained in March and it’s less than 30 percent of the total jobs added last month. It’s a tiny number and nowhere near what is necessary for a real recovery. Since the recovery started in June 2009, women and men have each gained private sector jobs, but public sector losses continue to hold everyone back – particularly women.

  

• 12,000: That’s the number of manufacturing jobs that women lost last month, while men gained 9,000. Just a few weeks ago we published an analysis of how the manufacturing recovery has been nonexistent for women. In his State of the Union address, President Obama praised the manufacturing gains since January 2010, just three years prior. But here’s the full story: Since January 2010, the economy has gained over a half million manufacturing jobs — men have gained 557,000, while women have actually lost 36,000. This isn’t a recovery for women in “man”ufacturing.

It’s the first Friday of the month and we’re back with our analysis of this month’s jobs data. While the recovery isn’t yet in full swing for women, March’s jobs numbers brought some good news.

Here is what you should know:

• Unemployment rates dropped. March was the first month in which adult women’s unemployment rate (7.4 percent) was lower than their 7.6 percent unemployment rate at the start of the recovery in June 2009. Adult men’s unemployment rate was slightly higher than women’s in March (7.6 percent), but was down 2.3 percentage points since the recovery began.
• Adult black women’s unemployment rate remained above their rate at the start of the recovery. In March, adult black women’s unemployment rate was 12.3 percent, still higher than it was in June 2009 (11.6 percent). The unemployment rates for single moms, adult black men, and adult Hispanic men and women were lower than at the start of the recovery, but all had unemployment rates that remained well above the national average.