The American economy added 192,000 new jobs in March, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth clocked in at 102,000. The headline unemployment rate was unchanged at 6.7 percent.
This is basically good news. The labor force participation rate increased because 500,000 people entered the labor force, and the raw number of unemployed stayed about the same. The fact that people are returning to the labor force is pretty positive, as is the fact that jobs numbers for January and February were revised upward a bit. Jared Bernstein points out that wage growth has been fairly strong over the past year, which also counts as good news as long as the Fed doesn’t use this as an excuse to start tightening monetary policy.
Overall, the economy is still puttering along, perhaps now back in second gear. It’s nothing to crow about, but it’s better than we’ve been doing for the past couple of months.
