April 2015 employment: surge in business, health care jobs

a release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 223,000 new jobs were added to the U.S. workforce in April, primarily in business, health care and construction. The unemployment rate remained steady between March and April, hovering around 5.4 percent of the population (about 8.5 million people). Of the new positions available, 62,000 of them are in business and professional services. This figure is up from the monthly average for business jobs — that is, 35,000 jobs — over the previous three months. Of those new positions, 16,000 of them were in building and dwelling services, 9,000 were in computer systems design, and business support services saw 7,000 new jobs created. Health care and construction also saw large gains, each increasing by 45,000 jobs last month. The bulk of the health care jobs were in ambulatory health care services (25,000 positions), and the vast majority of new construction jobs were for specialty trade contractors (a whopping 41,000 jobs). However, construction did see a loss of 8,000 jobs in nonresidential building. The transportation and warehousing industries also saw small gains, while the manufacturing, trade, hospitality, government, information and financial sectors saw little change from March’s numbers. Meanwhile, mining took another hit and lost another 15,000 jobs in April, mostly in mining support activities, and some in gas extraction. In the past five months, the mining industry has seen the loss of about 49,000 jobs.]]>