Employment by Industry: March Job Numbers Soar

The U.S. labor market saw a strong surge in employment to closed out the first quarter. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that employers added 916,000 to their payrolls in March, more than doubling the 379,000 jobs added in February. Following a dismal close to 2020 and a slow start in January, total non-farm employment rose by 1.295 million in February and March combined. These recent gains point to an economy recovering from the pandemic and a growing workforce that has benefited from improved vaccination efforts and lifted restrictions. Despite the added jobs this past month, however, the unemployment rate fell only slightly to 6.0%, compared to 6.2% the month prior, according to Steel Market Update’s latest analysis of the BLS data.

The addition of 916,000 jobs in March was the fastest gain since last summer as stronger economic growth contributed to a surge in hospitality and construction jobs. Even though the unemployment rate saw only a small decline month to month, the number of unemployed persons fell below the 10.0 million mark for the first time in 12 months, to 9.9 million. While 12.6 million people have found work since the peak of unemployment last April, the labor market still has a long way to go to return to the pre-pandemic levels of last February, when just 5.7 million were out of work and the unemployment rate was a mere 3.5%. Due to the pandemic fallout, the baseline against which future comparisons will be made is February 2020, the all-time high for nonfarm employment at 152,463,000. Figure 1 shows the total number of people employed in the nonfarm economy.