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US labour market shows signs of spring
It is nothing to write home about, but the US labour market continues to show gradual, if unspectacular, improvement. The good news included the 216K rise in non-farm payrolls in March, the largest increase for ten months, and the continued decline in the unemployment rate, now 8.8%. Encouragingly, the latter was due to a 291K increase in household employment in the month – in the last four months, almost 1m jobs have been created. This is despite a 100K decline in government employment over the same period. Also, the number of unemployed has fallen by a very pleasing 1.5m since November, although at the same time ... (full story)