by Calculated Risk on 4/07/2014 12:12:00 PM

Here is something I like to look at every month.

These diffusion indexes are a measure of how widespread job gains are across industries. The further from 50 (above or below), the more widespread the job losses or gains reported by the BLS.

From the BLS:

Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment.

Click on graph for larger image.

The BLS diffusion index for total private employment was at 58.5 in March, down from 59.1 in February.

For manufacturing, the diffusion index decreased to 50.0, down from 51.9 in March.

Job growth was fairly widespread for private employment in March.