The American economy added 217,000 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 127,000. The headline unemployment rate stayed steady at 6.3 percent.
As near as I can tell, there are no serious gotchas in this month’s report. The labor participation rate was stable, and the unemployment rate didn’t stay where it is because lots of people exited the labor force. This is a straightforward, decent-but-not-great jobs report, and it’s sure starting to look like this is where we’re going to be stuck for a while.
