In Charts: America's Jobs Situation

The economy added 175,000 jobs last month, according to last week's report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

For those who prefer numbers over narrative, I made a few charts detailing the country's jobs situation. 

Here's the monthly gain/loss of jobs since the last recession began in late 2007: 

There are several different ways the government measures unemployment. Here are the big ones: 

Here's employment growth since 2000 by education level:

Here's the change in employment since the recession started, broken out by private and government sectors:

Men were hit harder by the recession than women. That gap is now narrowing:

And from the blog Calculated Risk, what was once called "the scariest jobs chart in the world" is getting much less scary:

For more on the economy:

• Why I'm an optimist. 
• The most important numbers of the next half-century. 
• The biggest retirement myth ever told.