Payrolls Grew in March at Fastest Pace in Four Yea
Washington, DC, Apr. 2--U.S. employers in March hired workers at the fastest clip in four years, offering the brightest sign yet for the struggling labor market.
Nonfarm business payrolls grew by 308,000 jobs last month, faster than at any time since April of 2000, the Labor Department reported Friday. Still, the unemployment rate inched up a tenth of a percentage point to 5.7%. In recent months, the unemployment rate has declined mainly because people grew discouraged and stopped looking for work.
The report surpassed forecasts. Economists had expected payrolls to grow by only 120,000 jobs, and for the unemployment rate to hold steady at 5.6%, according to a survey by Dow Jones Newswires and CNBC.
Economists had been betting since December that faster economic growth would spur employers to hire workers at a pace of about 120,000 a month. They were consistently proven wrong: the average monthly job growth since August has been just 108,429.
The persistent job scarcity had alarmed U.S. economic policy makers and become a key liability for President Bush's re-election campaign. Federal Reserve policy makers, fearing the economic recovery could be derailed, opted to hold interest rates at four-decade lows at their last meeting.
Bush's rivals, meanwhile, regularly point out that he is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs in his term.
Since Bush took office, the economy has shed more than two million jobs. To replace those jobs and simultaneously provide employment for new entrants into the work force, economists say employers would need to add about 200,000 jobs a month for a year. Fed policy makers, as a result, have said they don't expect a full recovery in the labor market until late 2005 "or perhaps even later."
The Labor Department also revised its estimates of job growth for February and January, saying employers added more jobs than previously thought. Nonfarm payrolls grew just 46,000 in February, up from the initial estimate of a 21,000 gain. Payrolls growth was 159,000 in January, up from the previous estimate of 97,000.
In March, employers expanded payrolls in all major categories, except the information industry, which shed 1,000 jobs. The service-producing industry added 230,000 jobs, more than at any time in the last year. That included 47,000 more retail-trade jobs, partly reflecting the return to work of grocery-store employees who had been on strike in California. The professional-and-business-services industry added 42,000 jobs, the biggest increase in three months.
Construction payrolls grew by 71,000, more than reversing a 21,000 decline in February. Manufacturing payrolls held steady and stopped declining for the first time since the summer of 2000. Government jobs increased by 31,000, twice as many as in February.
The jobs growth coincided with a small increase in average hourly earnings, which rose two cents to $15.54 in March. The average work week declined by six minutes to 33 hours and 42 minutes.
