April 07, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Unemployment rate up in March 2008

The unemployment rate rose from 4.8 percent in February 2008 to 5.1 percent in March 2008.

[Chart data—TXT]

The number of unemployed persons increased by 434,000 to 7.8 million in March.

Since March 2007, the number of unemployed persons has increased by 1.1 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 0.7 percentage point.

Over the month, unemployment rates rose for adult men, adult women, and Hispanics. The jobless rates edged up for blacks and whites, while the rate for teenagers was essentially unchanged.

These data are from the Current Population Survey program and are seasonally adjusted. To learn more, see "The Employment Situation: March 2008" (PDF) (HTML), news release USDL 08-0448.