Jobless Rate Hits Decade-Low 6.3% as Half-Million Jobs Open : Unemployment Down Steadily Since September

The nation’s unemployment rate hit a decade-low 6.3% last month as nearly half a million jobs opened up in construction, retail trade and business and health services, the government said today.

The 0.3-percentage-point improvement over March’s rate cut the number of jobless Americans to 7.5 million, the lowest since April, 1980, when Jimmy Carter was President.

April’s unemployment matches a 6.3% rate for the first three months of 1980, the lowest rate of this decade. Not since December, 1979, when unemployment was 6%, has the rate been lower in the last 10 years.

The jobless rate has been falling steadily since September, when it stood at 7%.

Since then, employers added a net 1.8 million workers to their payrolls, virtually all in the service area, now responsible for more than three-fourths of the nation’s business and government employment. Manufacturing accounts for the remaining 24%.

The Labor Department’s monthly household survey showed 467,000 more Americans at work in April than in March, with total employment at a record 111,835,000. A separate survey of business and government payrolls showed an employment gain of 315,000.

Private analysts, noting recent trends, had predicted monthly job growth of just over 200,000.

The jobless rates for adult men and women each fell 0.3% to 5.5%. Unemployment among teen-agers dropped from 18.1% to 17.4%. Among blacks, the rate dropped from 13.9% to 13%.

The only increase among various population categories was for Latinos, rising from 9% to 9.2%.

The commissioner of labor statistics, Janet L. Norwood, said the restructuring away from an industrial economy to a service-based one has eroded the historical pattern of higher unemployment among women than among men.

“The adult male unemployment rate is still very much affected by the relative weakness of mining and of several key manufacturing industries,” she told the congressional Joint Economic Committee today.

“Women, on the other hand, have traditionally been more concentrated in some of the fast-growing service industries . . . now the primary source of increased jobs.”

The service side of the economy produced 275,000 of the 315,000 new jobs recorded last month. Of that, employment in retail trade, capitalizing on the late Easter, jumped by 65,000.

In business and health services, employment grew about 50,000. Banks and other financial institutions reported an increase of 20,000 workers, while real estate and insurance businesses said they hired 15,000 additional employees.

Apart from the service sector, construction employment jumped by 25,000 jobs after big March layoffs. Analysts had expected a sharp rebound once Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto of an $88-billion highway-construction bill.

Manufacturing employment rose only 4,000. Small gains spread over a wide variety of industries were virtually offset by a 15,000-job drop in the auto industry. Many of those workers had been laid off but are now back on the job.