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March Job Gains Drive Unemployment Rate Down

Unemployment claim form on an office table

The U.S. economy notched another sizable payroll gain in March as the labor market extended a strong and speedy recovery to bring employment closer to pre-pandemic levels.

The Labor Department released its March jobs report Friday morning and here are the main metrics compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

  • Non-farm payrolls: +431,000 vs. +490,000 expected, and an upwardly revised +750,000 in February
  • Unemployment rate: 3.6 percent, vs. 3.7 expected, 3.8 percent in February
  • Average hourly earnings, month-over-month: 0.4 percent vs. 0.4 percent expected, and an upwardly revised 0.1 percent in February
  • Average hourly earnings, year-over-year: 5.6 percent vs. 5.5 percent expected, and an upwardly revised 5.6 percent in February

March’s closely-watched jobs report saw payrolls come in lower than expected but still marked a fifteenth consecutive month of expansion for the U.S. workforce. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had anticipated payrolls to rise by 490,000, according to consensus data. At 678,000, last month’s employment report reflected a stunning upside surprise to investors, with payrolls rising 255,000 more than consensus estimates projected at the time. Moreover, job gains from the last report were also upwardly revised even further to show 750,000 jobs added or created.

The unemployment rate dropped a more-than-expected two-tenths of 1 percent, edging closer to the historic low of 3.5 percent seen in February 2020, Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick noted, though pointing out that the labor force participation rate remains 1 percentage point below its pre-pandemic level.

Click here to see the full report from Alexandra Semenova at Yahoo Finance.

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