One Million U.S. Jobs Heralds New Economic Era

If the February U.S. jobs report signaled that America is truly rounding the final corner on the Covid-19 pandemic, then after a month of ramped up vaccinations and warmer weather, the latest data suggest that the world’s largest economy is now in an all-out sprint to herd immunity and a full reopening.

U.S. employers added 916,000 jobs in March, easily beating the 660,000 gain projected by economists in a Bloomberg survey and surpassing even the more optimistic crowd-sourced “whisper number” of 800,000. The unemployment rate fell to 6%, matching estimates, while the labor force participation rate ticked higher to 61.5%, though it remains stubbornly close to the most depressed level since the 1970s. February’s payroll additions were revised higher by 89,000 to 468,000, meaning that combined with the new March figures from the Labor Department, the U.S. gained just more than a million jobs.