US non-farm payrolls grow nearly twice as quickly as expected in March
By Alexander Bueso
Date: Friday 02 Apr 2021
(Sharecast News) - The pace of job growth in the US recovered substantially last month, nearly doubling economists' forecasts, led by hiring in the beaten-down travel sector as the economy began reopening.
According to the Department of Labor, non-farm payrolls surged by 916,000 in March, following an upwardly-revised gain of 468,000 in February.
February's increase had originally been reported at 379,000.
That compared to economists' forecasts for a 600,000 person increase in payrolls, although Barclays Research was nearer the mark with its forecast for 900,000.
The rate of unemployment meanwhile dropped by two tenths of a percentage point to 6.0%, as expected, even as the labour force participation rate ticked up by a tenth of a percentage point to 61.5%.
Hiring in Leisure and Hospitality was strongest in March with the sector adding 280,000 jobs, but remained by far and away the weakest when compared with a year-earlier, with employment still down by 18.5%.
Other sectors of the economy, such as Government, Education and Manufacturing, had suffered a much smaller decline, of around 5.0% on average.
Business services' employment on the other hand had declined by only 3.2%, and that in Construction and Retail by 2.4% in both cases.
U-6 unemployment, which also takes into account Americans who had stopped looking for work after becoming discouraged or who were doing part-time work but wanted full shifts, dropped from 11.1% to 10.7%.
In another positive development for the economy, Americans also worked longer work weeks, which reached 34.9 hours, up from 34.6 in February (consensus: 34.7).
Also on Friday, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the US Food and Drug Administration, argued that it was still "touch and go" but that the US might be able to avoid a fourth wave of Covid-19 if the country can buy itself a couple of weeks' time.
By one estimate, approximately 28% of the US population of 328.0m had already received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, while some analysts put the proportion of Americans who had already recovered from the virus at near 30%.
The pace of inoculations in the US meanwhile was already running at well over 2.5m shots per day.
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