Finance & Business World

Michigan and Florida lost the most U.S. jobs in March, contributing to the biggest decline in American payrolls in five years.

Employment in Michigan dropped by 21,900 workers last month while Florida lost 17,400 jobs, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. Payrolls fell in 27 states plus the District of Columbia.

The economy has lost jobs in each of the first three months of the year, culminating in an 80,000 drop in March that was the biggest since 2003, Labor reported earlier this month. Growing unemployment is one reason more and more economists say the U.S. is already in a recession.

“In Florida, it really is a story about how much damage the drop in construction is doing to the economy there,'' said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. In Michigan, “the auto industry is just getting creamed right now because consumers are seeing their purchasing power squeezed. They are making their existing cars last a few months or a few years longer.''

The decline in Michigan reflected a 14,800 drop in factory payrolls. The national figures issued on April 4 showed auto manufacturers cut 24,000 jobs last month, “largely'' reflecting the effects of a strike at a supplier for Detroit-based General Motors Corp.

Florida Job Losses

In Florida, a 17,000 slump in payrolls at professional and business-service companies, a category that includes temporary- help agencies and building management, accounted for the bulk of the decline in employment paydayloan. Florida construction companies also eliminated 6,700 workers from payrolls.

The two states also led the list in the year ended in March, with Michigan losing 74,200 jobs and Florida 56,600.

Combined, the state figures showed payrolls fell by 49,000 last month after a decline of 12,000 in February.

The state and local employment data are derived independently from the national statistics, which are typically released on the first Friday of every month. The state figures, because they come from smaller surveys, are subject to larger sampling errors, according to the Labor Department.

The national jobless rate rose to 5.1 percent last month, the highest level since September 2005, the government's report earlier this month showed.

Louisiana, where the jobless rate jumped 0.8 percentage point in March to 4.5 percent, led the increase in unemployment compared with the prior month. California, Indiana and New Mexico each showed a half-percentage-point rise in jobless rates in March.

The biggest increases in unemployment over the year ended March, a 1.2 percentage-point jump, were registered by California, Florida, Nevada and Rhode Island.

Michigan had the highest jobless rate of all states at 7.2 percent, followed by Alaska at 6.7 percent and California at 6.2 percent.

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