How the White House Views Employment after April

As 2014 nears the halfway mark, U.S. citizens are looking for reassurance that the stalled economic growth of the first quarter isn't a sign of ill things to come. In fact, with its April 2014 jobs report, the White House is cautiously optimistic with its projections for rising employment rates and economic growth in the coming months.

With the results in from the April 2014 jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the White House proudly reports that April marked the 50th consecutive month that businesses have added jobs. In fact, 288,000 new jobs were added in April alone, with 277,000 of them coming from the private sector. This makes the total number of private sector jobs added over the last 50 months rise to 9.2 million, crowning April 2014 as the third strongest month of growing employment rates in that 50-month period.

Encouragingly, these employment rate gains were spread in a consistent pattern across a sample of 17 different industries that include retail, construction, business, finance and manufacturing, among others. This pattern of job growth is highly consistent with last year's pattern, suggesting that this growth in employment rates is not a statistical anomaly and that the growth will continue throughout the year.

According to Politico.com, these encouraging stats are a relief to the White House and Democrats in the House and Senate, whose success in the coming 2014 midterm elections depends on a growing and successful economy. The April jobs report assuaged fears that the stalled economy of the first three months of 2014 was a sign of the return of a regressive economic downturn of lower employment rates. Happily, the harsh winter seems to only have temporarily slowed things down as April's report came in significantly above the projected expectations.

However, as mentioned by Politico, the high employment rate statistics should be taken with a grain of salt. Unemployment rates did drop from 6.7 percent to 6.3 percent, the lowest since October 2008, but that is mostly because the labor force has hit a 35-year low of only 62.8 percent. This ties in with the fact that, according to the jobs report, people who suffer from long-term unemployment are markedly similar demographically to those with short-term unemployment. Why the labor force is shrinking is unknown, but as the White House points out, steps are being taken to protect the long-term unemployed with measures to reinstate extended unemployment insurance benefits.

Even if your take on the April 2014 jobs report is one of caution, it is laden with optimistic projections for the country's economic growth. With 288,000 jobs added, the economy is well on its way to the 300,000+ jobs added per month statistic that is characteristic of a booming, successful economy.

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