Preliminary report from BLS shows decline of 663,000 jobs in March (update 6)

By Juli Morris on April 3, 2009 in BLS Nonfarm Employment.

Employment fell by 663,000 jobs in March, according to the preliminary report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than the loss of 752,000 forecast by WANTED Technologies. The unemployment rate rose from 8.1 to 8.5 percent — the highest level since 1983.

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March is the fourth consecutive month that job declines topped 600,000 in the so-called "Employment Situation" report — the first time that has happened since the government began collecting data in 1939.

Economists had estimated a decline of 654,000, according to a poll by Thomson/Reuters. TrimTabs Investment Research had estimated a loss of between 700,000 and 750,000 jobs.

Revisions

The March numbers represent a preliminary report that is subject to future revision. BLS today revised its nonfarm payroll figures for January from a drop of 655,000 to a drop of 741,000. Even before the revision, the January numbers represented the third-largest jobs loss in American history, trailing only an 834,000 drop in 1949 related to a national coal strike and a nearly two million drop following the end of World War Two in 1945.

BLS' preliminary forecast for January, first released in early February, showed a decline of 598,000. With today's revision, the January number is now nearly 24 percent lower than what BLS first estimated.

The BLS number for February remained unchanged at a decline of 651,000.

Industry breakdown

Job declines were reported across wide swaths of the economy, BLS said, noting that since "the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last five months."

For March, BLS' preliminary data shows a decline of 43,000 jobs in the finance sector. WANTED Technologies had forecast a loss of 33,100 jobs in that sector.

BLS' preliminary report said the transportation and warehousing industry lost 34,000 jobs in March, raising total job losses to 265,000 since employment peaked in December 2007. WANTED Technologies expected a drop of 53,000 jobs in transportation in March.

Health care jobs increased 14,000 in March, BLS said. WANTED had forecast a rise of 28,600 jobs for March.

The entire report is available here. Bloomberg coverage is here.