March Jobs Report Shows Strong Gains: Live Updates

A burst of new jobs last month was due to a continued torrent of consumer demand and an emerging atmosphere of normalcy as coronavirus caseloads and health restrictions fade away.

The Labor Department said employers added 431,000 jobs in March. The unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, down from 3.8 percent a month earlier, but still higher than it was before the Pandemic.

Job openings and the number of workers voluntarily leaving their positions are near record levels, among the measures showing that demand for workers is the highest in decades.

We may be moving toward the idea that the grip on the American mind has loosened because of the virus.

More urban office workers seem to be headed back to their desks, giving a boost to hard-hit downtown economies, and the drop in coronavirus cases has prompted many people to resume tourism and in-person entertainment.

The last six months have seen an average gain of 600,000. The economy has recovered more than 90 percent of the jobs that were lost in the peak of the Pandemic in the spring of 2020.

There were 152.5 million jobs in February 2020.

While business growth, wage growth and high spending signal a robust recovery, price increases are casting a dour shadow. Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 outbreak at supply centers in Asia are pushing up inflation.

Mark Hamrick, the senior economic analyst at the financial website Bankrate, said that the state of the job market provides a solid underpinning for household finances.