RJ and Makay

While overall unemployment fell to 8.8% in March, the job situation in the financial sector had mixed results. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for the "financial activities supersector," which consists of the Finance and Insurance sector and the Real Estate, Rental, and Leasing sector, show that unemployment in the supersector climbed from 6.9% in February to 7.1% in March.

In number terms, the supersector did add 6,000 jobs in March, though, improving slightly over the last two consecutive months of job losses. At 7,610,000, however, the number of employees in the supersector is still 741,000 shy of its December 2006 peak of 8,351,000 and lower than the headcount at anytime from 2001 through 2010. The supersector's unemployment rate is still more than triple the low of 2.1% it achieved in December 2005.

Financial professionals might be interested in an InvestmentNews report about a poll by Advisors Trusted Advisor, which recently uncovered some surprising trends in the financial advice industry. Of the 262 advisors polled, more than half were at fee-only firms, a quarter worked as independent reps, and the rest were employed by wirehouses, brokerages, banks or insurers. Survey participants had a median of about $400 million in assets under management.

Here are the seven trends the poll revealed, in descending order, just as described by InvestmentNews:

A large majority of economists — 62% — think the Federal Reserve's $600 billion bond-purchase program, also known as quantitative easing, is helping to support U.S. growth. The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) reported that finding recently after surveying 263 of its members.

Of the survey respondents, 21.8% thought quantitative easing was having no impact and 15.8% said it was harmful. When asked about the level of monetary stimulus, slightly more than half said it's just right and 41% described it as too stimulative.