hype? time is running out and a lot of work is ahead. it s friday, april 1st, 2011. we re not going to do any idiotic april fool s stuff. because twitter has officially ruined april fools. we have to say good morning. we will start with breaking news on the economy. the unemployment rate dropping again. it s inched down to 8.8%. that s the lowest in two years. in march, the economy saw a gain of 216,000 jobs, but 13.5 million americans are still unempl unemployed. the labor force participation rate. that s holding at 64.2% with 921,000 discouraged workers leaving the workforce last month, giving up on their job search. john sylvia is a chief economist for wells fargo securities.
192,000 and employers are hiring at the fastest rate since the recession began but 13.5 million are still unemployed. 921,000 discouraged workers left the workforce last month giving up. bring in labor secretary hilda solis. the good and the bad. the participation rate held at 64.2%. the unemployment numbers overall are obviously good news for the administration and for america. yes, andrea. i will tell you that in february and march we had one of our biggest growths there in the private sector. and that was since 2006. so we have made some progress. and overall in the last 13 months we saw 1.8 million private sector jobs added to our economy. but as you say and we know, we still have a long way to go. we still have a lot of people hurting that haven t found employment yet. that s why the president is talking about investments in
to be able to purchase homes easier? yeah. yes. the midwest has the highest percentage of homeownership right now. about 71%. the south is next. 69%. the big gap is over in the northeast. here in the northeast where i am. homeownership is 64.2%. in the west, where i m trying to sell a place, 61.4% right now. why the huge gap? home prices. cheap nest the midwest and in the south. average price home in the midwest, $155,000. out west, the average price for a home is $221,000. also the housing bubble burst in the west. that was huge. that was huge. that s where the most numbers of foreclosures are now. if highest in nevada and arizona. and those people are definitely hurting home values out there have plunged and they are still not recovering like the rest of the country now. we just got some information on home prices yesterday that does show a slight increase
the biggest hiring spree in five years, and yet we re seeing the unemployment rate climb. why is that? well, in a basic sense, there are two different surveys. one is the payroll numbers as companies go out and make payments, that s one thing they re measuring. the other thing is a household survey where government officials call around to different houses and ask what s going on. so they re two totally different surveys. that s why they show different things. if you look inside the numbers, there was a ton of great numbers and the market reacted to it. there was, you know, a little bit of news that wasn t so great when you look at, for example, the labor participation rate stood at 64.2%. the same as it was last month. the number of people employed, 13.7 million people out of work. that is the same as it was last month. the total number. so even though we saw some hiring in one survey, we saw things static in the other survey. overall, though, the market is interpreting it as good n