The unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%, according to the March jobs report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Over the past 12 months, the labor market has seen a net gain of more than 4.1 million jobs, averaging 345,417 jobs gained, per month, helping drop the unemployment rate to decades-low levels. President Joe Biden called the March employment report a"a good jobs report for hard-working Americans," in a statement released Friday morning.
Job openings fell to 9.93 million ; ADP's private-sector job gains came in at 145,000 for March, landing below expectations of 200,000; the Challenger Report showed job cuts on the rise with 89,703 layoffs announced in March, a 15% gain from February; and continuing jobless claims hit 1.823 million, a level not seen since December 2021.
"The new revised path of [jobless] claims more closely aligns with an increase of job cut announcements in recent months and also with the slowdown in payroll growth," he said in a note."[Unemployment insurance] claims data will continue to provide an early signal into whether the labor market is likely to cool further in the coming months."
"In reality, it's more of a rebalancing from the white-hot market post-pandemic," she said."We've heard a lot about layoffs, but there were still so many unfilled jobs in the tech sector that what we're seeing is a lot of folks who have been displaced or lost their jobs in the last few months, are very quickly finding new opportunities."