The Employment Report

The employment report was released today, and both employment and wages rose. As reported by Bloomberg:

American employers added a greater- than-expected 243,000 workers in February and incomes rose, signs the job market will bolster consumer spending and economic growth. ... Wages in the last 12 months rose by the most in more than four years...

Here's a graph of changes in employment in the construction, manufacturing, services, and government sectors since 2000. To make the comparisons easier, the employment dated are normalized to equal one in January, 2000. The dashed line shows constant employment:

Here are the growth rates, which show the same information in a different way:

These graphs do not give a sense of magnitude, i.e. they do not say which of these series contributes the most to employment. Here is the average contribution to total employment for each series since 2000, i.e. the simple average by sector since 2000:

And finally, here are the changes in employment for each sector since 2000. The 2000 start date is chosen arbitrarily, but I think this gives a good sense of what has been happening in recent years:

PGL at Angry Bear comments on the increase in unemployment noted in the report brought about by an increase in labor force participation. Update: William Polley also comments. Update: More detail on the service sector.