April 6

4/6 – The employment market is not dead yet. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. employers added 178,000 net new jobs in March, after averaging just 17,000 per month for Jan/Feb. Additionally, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.4 to 4.3%. The numbers are significant considering that the BLS revised 2025 job growth sharply downward, from an average of 58,000 to just 10,000 new jobs per month. Compare these numbers to the 10 years pre-pandemic, from 2010 to 2019, when the U.S. economy created 158,000 new jobs per month. But March’s big jobs number may not be sustainable. During the steady growth economy of the 5-years preceding the pandemic (2015-2019) the U.S. experienced an average “new hires” rate of 3.8%. But the “new hires” rate dropped to 3.1% in February, and we’ve averaged just 3.3% for the past 8 months – a 12-year low not seen since just after the financial crisis in 2013.