Employment in the United States expanded by 178,000 in March and the unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent.
Economists had forecast the economy would add 59,000 workers and the unemployment rate would hold steady at 4.4 percent. The prior month’s estimate of a decline of 92,000 was revised even further into negative territory to a drop of 133,000.
The February jobs figures were pulled down by a large strike in the healthcare sector. March saw that reverse, with the sector adding 76,000 workers in the month. Over the past 12 months, the sector has added an average of 29,000 each month.
Construction employment jumped by 26,000. Transportation and warehousing payrolls expanded by 21,000. Manufacturing added 15,000.
The Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal government and “reprivatize” the U.S. economy continued to cause payrolls to decline, with employment falling by 18,000. Since the Biden government payrolls peak in October 2024, federal government employment is down by 355,000, or 11.8 percent. Private employment, on the other hand, rose 186,000.
Financial sector payrolls have also been shrinking. In March, payrolls in finance declined by 15,000, bringing the decline since the peak in May 2025 to 77,000.
Hiring also became more broad-based in March. The Labor Department’s private-sector diffusion index, which measures how widely job gains are spread across industries, rose to 56.8 from 49.2 in February. A reading above 50 indicates that more industries are adding jobs than cutting them, suggesting that March’s employment gains were spread across a wider range of businesses rather than concentrated in just a few sectors.
Wages continued to rise in March. The average hourly earnings for all employees rose by 9 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $37.38. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.5 percent, beating inflation. In March, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees edged up by 5 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $32.07. The average work week inched down to 34.2 hours from 34.3 hours.
The labor force participation rate ticked down from 62 percent to 61.9 percent.
The estimate for January was revised up by 34,000, from a gain of 126,000 to 160,000. Combined with the downward revision to February, payrolls were 7,000 smaller in the first two months of the year than previously estimated.
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