RJ and Makay

The jobs market is continuing its gradual recovery in spite of Middle East turmoil, the disaster in Japan, and layoffs by local governments. Indeed, the economy added a net of 216,000 jobs in March and unemployment fell to a two-year low of 8.8%, the Labor Department reports.

Private employers, the backbone of the economy, drove nearly all the gains by adding 230,000 jobs after a gain of 240,000 in February. This marks the first time since 2006 — more than a year before the recession — that private-sector hiring topped 200,000 in two straight months.

Factory overtime is on the rise, according to the Labor Department, and that's great news for a lot of Americans who've had to settle for part-time work when they wanted to be full-time. On average, factory workers put in 4.2 hours of overtime in February, the most since July 2007.

“There's only so much overtime you can make your workers work before you have to add [employees],” says John Canally, an economic strategist at LPL Financial. Some of the latest economic data points to further employment gains in manufacturing in coming months, he adds.

Underemployment—the measure of those either unemployed or working part-time but wanting full-time work—remained unchanged since the end of June at 18.3%, according to the latest Gallup poll.  The slight decline in part-time workers seeking full-time employment (from 9.5% to 9.2%) was offset by a slight uptick in unemployment from 8.9% to 9.1%.

The Gallup survey is based on more than 15,000 phone interviews with U.S. adult’s ages 18 years and older who were currently employed. Gallup also deduced the percentage of employees working part-time but wanting full-time work declined slightly in mid-August from 9.5% to 9.2%. Among subgroups in the U.S. workforce Gallup finds: