US adds over 9 lakh jobs in March as recovery gained steam

The US jobs rebound picked up steam last month, fueled by the accelerating pace of vaccinations and a new injection of federal aid.

Employers added 916,000 jobs in March, up from 416,000 in February and the most since August, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate fell to 6 per cent, down from 6.2 per cent in February.

The report came one year after the pandemic ripped a hole in the US labor market. The US economy lost 1.7 million jobs in March 2020 and more than 20 million in April, when the unemployment rate peaked at nearly 15 per cent.

The job market bounced back quickly at first, but progress began to slow as virus cases surged and states reimposed restrictions on businesses. Over the winter, the recovery stalled out, with employers cutting more than 300,000 jobs in December.

Economists said the latest data marked a turning point. Last month was the third straight month of accelerating hiring and even bigger gains are likely in the months ahead. The March data was collected early in the month, before most states broadened vaccine access and before most Americans began receiving $1,400 checks from the federal government as part of the most recent relief package.

“The tide is turning,” said Michelle Meyer, chief US economist for Bank of America. The report, she said, “reaffirms this idea that the economy is accelerating meaningfully in the spring.”

The US still has millions fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic. Even if employers kept hiring at the pace they did in March, it would take months to fill the gap. And the virus remains a risk. Coronavirus cases are rising again in much of the country as states have begun easing restrictions. If that trend turns into a full-blown new wave of infections, it could force some states to backpedal, impeding the recovery.

But few economists expect a repeat of the winter, when a spike in Covid-19 cases pushed the recovery into reverse. More than a quarter of US adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and more than 2 million people a day are being inoculated. That should allow economic activity to continue to rebound.

“This time is different, and that’s because of vaccines,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the job site ZipRecruiter. “It’s real this time.”