March jobs report reveals tighter labor market, lower unemployment rate

According to the Labor Department’s latest monthly jobs report, the United States added 431,000 jobs in March. While experts consider that job growth solid, it does represent the fewest number of jobs added since September. Still, the chief investment officer of private wealth at Glenmede said March’s report reflects the job market’s durability in the midst of numerous obstacles.

“The U.S. labor market remains a bright spot in an otherwise challenging economic environment beset by inflation and geopolitical risks,” Jason Pride said, “taking meaningful strides in moving past the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Last month’s job growth helped shrink the unemployment rate to 3.6%. That’s the lowest rate since the pandemic began, quickly approaching the half-century low of 3.5% that was reached shortly before the pandemic began.

“With 7.9 million jobs added since President Biden took office and unemployment close to pre-pandemic levels, this strong job growth continues our historic, worker-centered recovery,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in a Friday statement. “The administration’s strategy to tackle the pandemic and grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out has gotten America back to work and brought real wage gains for many of the hardest-pressed families.”

As Walsh noted, the March jobs report showed wages rising in many industries. However, wages aren’t keeping up with the spike in inflation that has put the Federal Reserve on track to raise rates multiple times in the coming months. March’s job report was the first one since the Fed began those rate hikes.

“Inflation is still problem obviously,” Randy Frederick, the managing director of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, said. He added that the March jobs report “certainly doesn’t change the Fed’s actions or what the Fed’s likely actions are going to be.”

“I think that we’ve already kind of been told not explicitly, but pretty close to that, that we’re going to get a half point right rate hike on May 4,” Frederick said.