Although the March job losses were high they were in line, with what economic forecasts had suggested.  This thankfully, provided some relief, that things aren’t worse than expected. That, and the fact that February job losses weren’t revised downwards, as previous months had been, suggests that layoffs may be flattening out.

Since jobs are a “lagging indicator,” the struggling U.S. economy will continue to shed them even after a turnaround has begun. Many economists think that the unemployment rate could top 10% this year, even if the condition of the economy begins to improve, as some indicators are starting to suggest.

Since December 2007, when the recession began, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the jobs being lost in the last five months.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.”

Manufacturers trimmed another 161,000 jobs in March; factory employment has fallen by 1 million over the past six months, the BLS said.

Both residential and commercial construction remains in the dumps, and builders axed another 126,000 jobs in March. The new twist is that commercial construction is beginning to suffer just as residential construction was hit last year.

“Unlike previous periods in this economic cycle, the bulk of job losses for the first quarter of 2009 were in the nonresidential sector as opposed to the residential sector,” according to Anirban Basu, the chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors, an industry group. “This suggests that the residential construction sector is much closer to its bottom than is the nonresidential construction sector, which is a relative newcomer to the ongoing downturn.”

The government’s economic-stimulus spending should begin to ease some of the pain in the construction sector by encouraging infrastructure projects by late this year.