April Employment Data

A report on State and Regional employment data for April has just been released.
Some of the highlights:
Highlights:
* “Over the past year, the unemployment rate has fallen in 47 states.
* “Non-farm payroll employment increased in 45 states in April.
* “Over the past year, employment has increased in 44 states.
“The latest state-by-state data are consistent with recent job growth nationwide. In the past 8 months, over 1.1 million new payroll jobs have been created. Over 800,000 new jobs have been created in 2004 alone. If the current pace of job growth for 2004 continues, over 2.6 million jobs will be created this year. In addition, the current unemployment rate is 5.6 percent, well below its recent peak of 6.3 percent and below the average unemployment rates of the 1970?s, 1980?s, and 1990?s.”