Good jobs,bad jobs,but notenoughof either

WASHINGTON – It’s not just McJobs.

April employment numbers make it clear the US economy is generating high-skilled positions across a number of sectors.’There are literally thousands of very high quality jobs that are being created across the country, in technology and financial services and in manufacturing,’ said Scot Melland, president and CEO of Dice.com, a career site and job board for technology and engineering professionals based in New York.One problem: the sectors offering the highest pay represent just a small sliver of the overall job market. Their growth alone does little to alleviate the nation’s massive and persistent unemployment problem.While the economy produced 244 000 net new jobs in April, job creation in the nearly two years since the recovery began has made up just around 1,2 million of the more than eight million positions that were lost in the brutal recession.At the current rate, it would take more than two years to bring employment to pre-recession levels – and that’s not accounting for the continuous expansion of the labour force.So while the economy is generating some good jobs, it may not be doing it at a fast enough clip to make the recovery feel like one for many Americans.’When it comes to recessions, the US economy doesn’t bounce back like it used to,’ said Gad Levanon, associate director for macroeconomic research at The Conference Board, an industry research group.In recent years, the United States has gotten a bad reputation for exporting many of its higher-paying jobs and producing a lot of low-paid work in the services sector.This sense was reinforced last month by McDonald’s hiring spree of tens of thousands of workers, though that announcement came too late in April to be captured by the employment survey.STICKY, BUT SCANTIn the wake of a housing slump that refuses to heal, construction has been particularly hard hit. But state and local government workers, facing layoffs due to budget strains, are quickly joining the ranks of the unemployed.Applications for new jobless benefits rose to 474 000 last week, their highest level in eight months, raising worries that the better payroll numbers in April – when 244 000 new jobs were added – may have been the best of it.’The question is whether or not this pace [of job creation] will be sustained, which is probably not likely,’ said Sean Incremona, economist at 4Cast Ltd in New York.US retail employment posted large gains, with some 57 000 new jobs, though some economists attributed part of the rise to seasonal factors related to a late Easter holiday.Still, professional and business employment added a robust 51 000 jobs, while manufacturing added 29 000, indicating more broad-based improvement than simply low-end jobs.’It’s obvious these jobs are sticky, and not of the temporary, part-time variety,’ said Todd Schoenberger, managing director of LandColt Trading LLC, in Lewes, Delaware.Fresh weakness in temporary employment, often a harbinger of overall hiring, was hard to read. But economists at RBS saw it as a positive signal.’It may well be the case that the softness in temp help in April signals a shift in demand from temporary to permanent hires,’ Omar Sharif and Michelle Girard said in a research note.Despite the better April figures, Federal Reserve officials are expected to wait a while longer to confirm the labour market’s improvement before they begin thinking about raising interest rates, currently at record low levels close to zero.For now, the pockets of improving hiring may be too narrow to offer much immediate hope for most jobless Americans.- Nampa-Reuters