March Jobs Report – The Numbers

Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

JOBS

103,000

Employers added 103,000 jobs in March, compared with a revised 326,000 in February and below the 178,000 new jobs economists expected. Payroll growth in February and January was revised down by 50,000 on net, meaning monthly job gains have averaged a still-robust 202,000 over the past few months. Last month’s job creation was concentrated in the manufacturing, health care and mining industries, while retail employment dropped slightly.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE 

4.1%

The jobless rate was 4.1% in March for the sixth consecutive month, holding at the lowest level since 2000. Economists had expected the unemployment rate to tick slightly lower to 4.0% for the month.

WAGES

2.7%

Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose to $26.82 in March from the previous month. The figure is 2.7% above the hourly wages workers saw in March last year, which is broadly in line with the moderate pace of wage gains so far this year.

LABOR-FORCE PARTICIPATION

62.9%

The share of American adults working or looking for a job fell by 0.1 percentage point to 62.9% in March. The rate is up slightly from a recent low of 62.3% in 2015, but still near the smallest share of adults participating since the late 1970s, a time when women were still entering the workforce in greater numbers. Workforce participation hasn’t moved much over the past year. It peaked in 2000 and is expected to decline further in the coming years due to in part to an aging workforce.

from Real Time Economics https://ift.tt/2H1pACh