Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 236,000 in March, and the unemployment rate changed
little at 3.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend
up in leisure and hospitality, government, professional and business services, and health care. …

The labor force participation rate, at 62.6 percent, continued to trend up in March. The employment-population ratio edged up over the month to 60.4 percent. These measures remain below their pre-pandemic February 2020 levels (63.3 percent and 61.1 percent, respectively). (See table A-1.)

We're starting to see 2 economies for jobs: Still hiring in restaurants/health/gov but not in retail/real estate

Hospitality: +72,000
Gov't +47,000
Biz: +39,000
Healthcare +34,000
Social aid +17,000

Retail -14,600
Warehousing -11,800
Construction -9,000
Real estate/leasing…

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) April 7, 2023

[I won’t have time for a lengthy breakdown today of these numbers, but I have a few observations. First, the new workforce ratios are the best we’ve seen since the pandemic, and might be indicating that we’re almost catching up, although those numbers were soft anyway: February 2020’s was 63.3%, but February 2007 was 66.3%. We’ve still never fully recovered from the 2007-8 financial crisis in that regard. Wage growth slowed from 4.6% in February to 4.2% in March, which isn’t a good sign for workers but might indicate that the job market has stabilized and inflation could be abating. Heather Long points out that jobs growth is still uneven, and the lack of retail growth might indicate something other than just inflation abating — it might indicate a recession coming. There are better signals to wait for on that call, though. — Ed]