Economy added 431,000 jobs in March as COVID fades but inflation soars; Unemployment rate fell to 3.6%
-
Loading... - Marc Blaise
- 01 Apr 2022
- 363 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
U.S. employers added a booming 431,000 jobs in March as tumbling COVID-19 cases more than offset growing concerns about soaring inflation and the war in Ukraine.
The unemployment rate fell from 3.8% to 3.6%, the Labor Department said Friday. That puts it just above the 50-year low of 3.5% that prevailed just before the pandemic upended the economy in March 2020.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had estimated that 440,000 jobs were added last month.
The economy has now added more than 400,000 jobs a month for 11 months, the longest such streak on record, Morgan Stanley noted in a report.
So far, the nation has recovered 20.4 million, or 93%, of the 22 million jobs lost early in the health crisis, leaving it 1.6 million jobs short of its pre-crisis level, a gap that could be closed by summer.
Another positive: Payroll additions for January and February were revised up by a total of 92,000. The upgrades pushed January's advance to 504,000 despite widespread omicron-related worker absences.
"The labor market still has strong positive momentum and is making rapid progress towards pre-pandemic health," economist Rubeela Farooqi of High Frequency Economics wrote in a note to clients.
The drop in unemployment came even as the number of people working or looking for jobs grew by 418,000, pushing the labor force participation rate from 62.3% to 62.4%, the highest since March 2020. More people who had been fearful of COVID or caring for children, among others, are returning to a favorable labor market with rising wages. Read More...
