Excerpt
Unemployment rates fell or remained level in three-quarters of the 372 largest metropolitan areas, a sign that the economic recovery is widespread.
The Labor Department said Wednesday the jobless rate dropped in 69 percent of metro areas last month from February. It rose in 24 percent of large cities and remained the same in the rest.
That's an improvement from February, when the unemployment rate decreased in 51 percent of metro areas and increased in one-third.
The report follows other recent encouraging news about jobs. Employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the government said earlier this month, the most significant gain in three years.
I am sure people-on-the-street (some literally) wish things would improve faster, but it is happening none the less.
UPDATE
"Psst ... The economy really is on the rebound" by Steve Jagler, OnMilwaukee.com 4/29/2010
Excerpt
Way back in July 2008, at a time when many were proclaiming that the fundamentals of the economy were sound, BizTimes Milwaukee was among the first to warn its readers that an economic downturn had begun and it was going to get worse.
In our most recent cover story, we stepped out again ahead of the curve with the pronouncement that a strong economic recovery has begun.
That pronouncement raised more than a few eyebrows. Was it premature? I suppose that is possible. But we documented strong economic data to support this conclusion. Home sales are up. Car sales are up. Temporary hiring is up. Factory orders are up. Retail sales are up. Milwaukee's airport passenger traffic is up. Mergers and acquisitions activity is up. The stock market is up.
We also cited some anecdotal observations that are pertinent to the bigger picture. Schneider National Inc. in Green Bay is hiring 2,500 new truck drivers to meet the rising demand of goods that are being produced.
Public relations offices in Milwaukee are buzzing with more activity, as companies express their pent-up demands for marketing new products and services.
Local companies such as Generac Holdings Inc., Douglas Dynamics Inc. and Quad/Graphics Inc. are confident enough in the market that they have launched initial public stock offerings. That was not happening in the darkest hours of the Great Recession.
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