• By
  • Phil Izzo

The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 8.2% in March and a broader measure dropped to 14.5% from 14.9% the prior month, but a separate survey noted that the economy added a paltry 120,000. Why the drop?





Meanwhile, the broader unemployment rate, known as the “U-6″ for its data classification by the Labor Department, dropped by 0.4 percentage point last month and has declined by more than a full percentage point in the past year. The U-6 figure includes everyone in the official rate plus “marginally attached workers” — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find.

The key to the drop in the broader unemployment rate was due to a 447,000 drop in the number of people employed part time but who would prefer full-time work, that comes on top of big drops in that category over the past year. That number could decline for negative reasons, such as workers completely dropping out of the labor force, but it also could be a positive reflection of people having their hours increased or part-time workers moving on to full time work.



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