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April 1 (UPI) — A month after shattering expectations on Wall Street, the Labor Department on Friday underwhelmed just a little bit with its March jobs report — showing about 60,000 fewer than expected.
The department issued its monthly labor assessment and said the U.S. economy added 431,000 jobs last month. Most economists expected the report to show around 490,000 new hires.
Friday’s report also showed that the national unemployment rate in March declined to 3.6%.
“Notable job gains continued in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, retail trade and manufacturing,” the department said in its assessment.
A month ago, the department blew away analysts’ expectations by reporting close to 700,000 new jobs in February. Although it slightly missed expectations this month, experts agree that the report shows the job market on stable footing. In fact, the unemployment rate and number of unemployed are close to what they were before the start of the COVID-19 era two years ago.
“The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 3.6% in March, and the number of unemployed persons decreased by 318,000 to 6 million,” the report noted. “These measures are little different from their values in February 2020 (3.5% and 5.7 million, respectively), prior to the coronavirus pandemic.”
President Joe Biden will address the jobs report in a briefing from the White House on Friday. He is scheduled to speak at 10:45 a.m. EDT.
On Wednesday, ADP and Moody’s Analytics reported that the private sector created 455,000 jobs in February — down from the past two months, but still hovering around the half-million mark.
Worker mobility continues to hover near all-time highs this year. The Labor Department said earlier this month that more than 4 million U.S. workers quit their jobs in February with 11.3 million job openings.
On Thursday, the department said that there were about 202,000 new unemployment claims last week, a slight increase from the week before.
