March’s jobs report closed the fourth quarter with continued job losses totaling 663,000 reductions to payrolls for the month, closing out a quarter which saw three consecutive months of job losses exceeding the 600,000 threshold.  While this is never encouraging news this is less than the 700,000+ job losses seen in January which could perhaps be a sign that we have seen the worst and hopefully are beginning to see signs of recovery on the horizon. 

The hardest hit industries continued to be manufacturing, construction and professional services which each lost over 100,000 jobs for the month.  It is important to note, however, that many of these job losses recorded in March are a result of layoff announcements made public at the end of Q408 and early Q109 as companies are enacting these reductions in stages and we’ll likely continue to see them trickle into the report in the coming months.

Despite all of the noise out there, there were some very real bright spots in this month’s report.  The healthcare industry continued to add jobs with 14,800 new hires being recorded in March alone.  Also, the accounting and finance industry, which has seen some reductions to payrolls in recent months, added 1,600 positions in March.  Being that tax season workers are included in the seasonal adjustment, this is a positive sign that employers are also looking to accountants to help provide the right level of financial analysis to keep their organization stable and fiscally responsible.  One more positive sign, the unemployment rate for college educated workers remains at almost half the national average -4.3% - another indicator that highly skilled and educated workers remain in demand even in the current economic climate.