Page 4 - May 1979 News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Thanks, see you at the top of the hour. record setting stock market, a recovery in housing, a boom in energy but where are the jobs? good morning, everyone. i'm christine romans. the economy is doing better and analysts have been raising estimates for first quarter economic performance but the resilience is not translating into faster job growth. last month the economy created just 88,000 net new jobs, far short of the expectation. the unemployment rate dropped to 7.6%. but that's because nearly 500,000 people dropped out of the labor force. in fact, the labor force participation rate fell to ...

Ed henry breaks down the budget. but we begin with chief washington correspondent james rosen on jobs. good evening, james. >> chris, good evening. economists say the only reason the jobless rate ticked down was because more americans gave up looking for work. bringing down the number of people officially counted as unemployed. >> the bureau of labor statistics reports the american workforce, the total number of americans working or looking for work shrank by nearly half a million people last month a decline of two tenths of a point which brought the share of the labor pool that's working or h...

So the bureau of labor statistics reported that the civilian labor force in march shrank by almost half a million people. share of americans looking for work now stands at 63% down slightly to its lowest level since may 1979, the jimmy carter era. the retail industry took a big hit in march losing 24,000 jobs that followed a six-month stretch where on average retail was adding 32,000 jobs a month. let's look who is bearing the brunt of the placebo recovery. for adult men, adult women and white people the unemployment rate is lower as a whole. the rate rises when you look at latinos. two points...

>> reporter: the man known as the dean of the civil rights movement calls the inaugural benediction one of the most memorable of his long career. that's saying a lot for a man who helped plan the montgomery bus boycott and lived to tell about the riots that followed king's death. but the one event lowery calls the most important of his life, it happened in decatur, alabama, may, 1979, during his 20-year reign, they were opposing the conviction of a man convicted of rape and fleeing the scene in a car. >> and tommy couldn't ride a bike. he didn't have the coordination, the motor control, you kn...

>> reporter: but the one event lowery calls the most important of his life. it happened in decatur, alabama, may 1979 during his 20-year reign as president of the christian leadership conference. they were there to protest the conviction of a mentally challenged man of tommy lee hines convicted of rape and fleeing the scene in a car. >> tommy couldn't ride a bike. he didn't have the coordination, the motor control, you know, between mind and body. to ride a car, to drive a car. let alone to ride a bike. >> reporter: lowery says on the day of the march, there were reports of radio conversations...