Unemployment rate in the United States increased by 0.1 percentage point in March compared to the previous month fixing at the level of 5% that corresponds to 8 million persons in absolute terms. Since the previous year unemployment rate decreased by 0.5 percentage points, but reduction occurred at a lower pace than in 2014-2015 period. Current unemployment rate is half its peak of 10% recorded at the end of 2007-2009 global financial crisis. Among US states, Alaska has the highest unemployment rate (6.6%) and South Dakota - the lowest (2.7%). In California accounting for 13% of US GDP unemployment rate is 5.5% as of February 2016.
Number of employed persons expanded by 246 thousands during March to 151.3 million persons. This represents 2.01% growth at annual rate, that is higher than those of. Employment to population ratio, however, changed little from the previous year due to the 1.07% population increase cancelling out employment gain.
Civilian labor force representing the sum of the unemployed and the employed is 159.3 million persons as of March 2016 - 2.4 million more than that of March 2015. What for overall labor force participation rate it grew by 0.1 percentage point following upward trend that is going on since September 2015.
Share of long-term unemployed, or those who cannot find job for 27 weeks and over, became less on 0.1 percentage points compared to February, so now it constitutes 27.6% of total unemployment. The same cannot be said about involuntary part-time employment: the number of individuals who wanted full-time work but could find only a part-time job rose by 2.3% to 6.1 million persons through March 2016. And even though current level of part-time employment decreased in relation to what was a year ago, still trending downwards since its peak of 9.2 millions in September 2010, historically its numbers remain relatively high.
Unemployment rate reduction is considered by many Americans as one of the highest-priority issues. But even in times of healthy economy there should be some unemployment, generally referred to as natural or normal - the lowest level of unemployment that is consistent with stable prices in a well-functioning economy. Currently it is considered to be 4.8% which is just below actual unemployment rate. So further reduction of unemployment in the United States will probably cool down or otherwise it may lead to inflation destabilization and economy overheating.