By Natalie Mojica
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate for March was 3.6%, down from 3.8% a month earlier.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones only saw nonfarm payrolls expand by 431,000 when they expected 490,000. However, the labor force has grown by 418,000 workers and is currently within the 174,000 range of the pre-pandemic state of the labor market.
Average hourly wages increased 0.4% this month, keeping in line with the trend for the past year when pay increased almost 5.6%. As for the average workweek, it’s down by 0.1 hours to approximately 34.6 hours.
Chief economist at State Street Global Advisor, Simona Mocuta, was unfazed by the news.
“All in all, nothing shocking about this report. There was nothing that was really surprising…even if this report came in at zero, I would still say this is a very healthy labor market,” Mocuta said.
Following the direction set throughout the pandemic, the leisure and hospitality industry created the greatest number of jobs, with an onset of 112,000 added. Professional and business services added 102,000 jobs, retail contributed 49,000, and manufacturing increased by 38,000. Other areas of the industry saw smaller gains, like social assistance and construction, which brought in 25,000 and 19,000 jobs, respectively.
Though the labor market is steadily adding jobs, there is a gap between the number of job openings compared to the number of available workers. Currently, there are about 5 million more job openings than available workers. This points to the labor-force participation rate, or the number of people employed or looking for work, increasing to 62.4% in March. The bulk of the labor-force growth has been women, with upwards of 300,000 women entering the labor market.
“All the constraints on the labor supply that were prevailing in 2021 have really eased,” which is “a really important factor in driving that next leg of the recovery and getting employment back to where it was before the pandemic,” Lydia Boussor, an economist at Oxford Economics noted.
