Jobs and Unemployment Are Up

May 7, 2010 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Good News Bad News on the economic front:

U.S. employers added 290,000 jobs in April, blowing past analysts’ expectations and giving a potential indication that the labor market is strengthening.

That figure was boosted by temporary hiring for the 2010 Census, but there were also jobs added in the private sector, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

Analysts had expected the report to show that the country added 162,000 jobs.

The report was not all positive. The unemployment rate inched up to 9.9 percent in April, compared with 9.7 percent in March. Forecasters had expected the unemployment rate to stay steady.

The increase might reflect that workers who had given up on finding a job have restarted their job search. Among those unemployed, the number of reentrants to the labor force rose by 195,000 last month, according to the report.

So people can view the cracked and damaged glass as half empty (you call them Republicans) or half full (you call them Democrats).

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