The economy added 98,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate declined to 4.5 percent, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The number of jobs was lower than what analysts had expected and below the 219,000 jobs added in February and 216,000 in January. While President Trump had recently tweeted a Fox Business clip that showed 263,000 jobs added, that was the less scientific ADP report.
JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!https://t.co/XGOQPHywrt pic.twitter.com/B5Qbn6llzE
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 6, 2017
March’s slowdown is likely due to weather and seasonal factors, however, and not necessarily an overall slowdown in growth. Both the previous months were also revised downward from the original reports by a net 38,000. The last three months have added an average of 178,000 jobs per month.
Trump has claimed he inherited a “mess,” but the economy doesn’t appear to have significantly changed since he took office. There have now been 77 straight months of job growth.
The unemployment rate fell for good reasons last month: an increase in people who were employed and a drop in people who were jobless and looking for work. The number of unemployed people fell by 326,000. That was thanks mostly to a decline in the short-term unemployed, or those out of work and seeking a job for less than five weeks. The number of long-term unemployed, for 27 weeks or more, was little changed. But there were also 23,000 people who dropped out of the labor force altogether and stopped looking for work.
A broader measure of unemployment, which takes into account those who have given up looking for a job and those who are working part-time but want more hours, also declined, falling to 8.9 percent from 9.2 percent in February and 9.8 percent a year ago. That’s the lowest rate since December 2007.
There was some mildly good news for wages: they increased by 5 cents in March after rising 7 cents in February, coming to an annual growth rate of 2.7 percent. But wage growth has been relatively flat since the recession despite the steady increase in jobs.
March’s job gains were driven by professional business services (56,000), food and drinking places (21,700), health care (14,000), mining (11,000), and manufacturing (11,000). Mining has added 35,000 jobs since a low in October 2016; March’s increase was mostly in mining services, not in the mines themselves, and coal mining added just 100 jobs. Retail lost a significant number of jobs in March, 29,700, after losing 26,000 in February, a potential fallout of continued trouble in the sector.