2005年NPR美国国家公共电台五月-April Sees Strong Job Growth（在线收听） |
| From NPR News, this is All things considered. I’m Robert Siegel, and I’m Melissa Block. There were some unexpectedly good news today about the economy. Late last month, businesses created more jobs than economists projected and the increases were spread across industries from construction and mining to health care and leisure. As NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports the strong numbers come as a relief to analysts worried that the economy has been slowing. The US created 274,000 new jobs in April. The Department of Labor also revised February and March figures upward. The result: healthy grows averaging about 240,000 jobs each month. The rosy employment report is good news amid concerns the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is growing at a slower pace. Bill Cheney is chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services. "I think this is,on the face of it, a very welcome report. I think it’s good news on almost every front. You’re seeing more jobs of better wage growth but nothing too exciting that would produce inflation scared for the Fed. So really this is,in many ways, the best news you could expect to get.” Analysts have been concerned about the impact of the rising fuel oil costs. Some say the new figures suggest many firms aren't as vulnerable to energy prices as in the past. Rajeev Dhawan runs the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University in Atlanta. “When all these reports coming on in April were pointing towards the negative aspect, especially the oil prices, but this report shows that in the last 6 months, we’ve created more than 1.1 million jobs which shows very clearly that oil is not a problem for the firms that are hiring people.” With school commencement coming up, analysts say student should have more opportunities than in the recent years. Stuart Hoffman is chief economist for PNC Financial in Pittsburgh. “It’s a reason about-to-be new colleges and high school graduates should have a much easier time finding a gainful job in the next couple months than their older brother or sister had two or three or four years ago when recent graduates really came out into a much tougher job market.” Some of the strongest growth last month came in construction which created 47,000 jobs. As in the past, the one area where jobs fell was manufacturing. Rajeev Dhawan says that was too bad because manufacturing often pays well. He says that’s not the case with many of the new jobs. “One thing that I would like to caution people about of these 1.1 million people only 10 to 11% were what we call high-paying jobs. Rest of the tens were either not well-paying or so so. Now if it was a great recovery, say like in the mid 90’s, then at least 20% of these jobs would have been high-paying.” Despite the job growth, last month’s unemployment rate held steady at 5.2%, one reason analysts said more people were out looking for work. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Washington. |
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