162,000 new jobs added to economy in March

The nation's unemployment rate remained steady at 9.7 percent in March, as black unemployment climbed a bit to 16.5 percent.

And for the first time in years, the U.S. economy added a significant number of jobs, the Labor Department reported on Monday.

162,000 new jobs were added to the economy in March, breaking a nearly two-year trend of job losses that reached nearly 800,000 a month when President Obama took office in January 2009 (see chart below). The numbers also reflect the government's hiring of 48,000 temporary Census workers.

The new numbers come as a newly emboldened President Obama and the White House try to focus on jobs. After inheriting an economy in recession, the president can now point to more positive economic numbers. The "underlying prognosis for the labor market," according to economists interviewed by the New York Times, is that the economy "has reached a turning point and will begin adding jobs at a slow, but steady, pace."

The official unemployment rate at 16.5 percent, however, does not include those who have left the workforce and are no longer looking for jobs. The total number of officially unemployed persons is 15.0 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government also reported that 6.5 million people are considered long-term employed because they have been jobless for 27 weeks or more.

The official unemployment rate for blacks (16.5 percent) was nearly twice as high as that for whites (8.8 percent) and significantly higher than that for Hispanics (12.6 percent).