The March jobs report will be released on Friday. Here's what to expect
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The U.S. economy is projected to show job gains of 59,000 in March, with the unemployment rate holding at 4.4%.
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Nonfarm payrolls are expected to bounce back — barely — in March as the bar keeps getting lower for what constitutes a healthy labor market. The U.S. economy is projected to show job gains of 59,000 for the month, an anemic rate by the standards of previous years this decade but enough to keep the unemployment rate at 4.4%. If the estimate is reasonably accurate, it actually would represent above-trend job growth for a labor market that has created virtually no jobs over the past year. Immigration restrictions, shifting demographics and geopolitical uncertainty have left companies eager neither to hire nor fire workers en masse, resulting in a static labor market and a series of ho-hum monthly counts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS will release the number Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, though the stock market will be closed in observance of the Good Friday holiday. "We have to revise our idea of what a good or bad job number is," said Guy Berger, chief economist at Homebase, which provides workforce management services for small businesses. A report like February's showing job losses "would have been raising alarm bells about the state of the labor market," he added. "Now we're like, yeah, that was a very bad report, but it doesn't freak anybody out about the job market. I didn't look at that report and say, wow, we're on the verge of tipping into recession." Jobless rate in view Echoing views expressed by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and other central bankers, Berger said he's more focused on the unemployment rate as a gauge of labor market stability. With the changes to the workforce, it's requiring ever-smaller payroll growth to keep the jobless rate steady. The current unemployment rate of 4.4% is just 0.2 percentage point above where it was a year ago, despite the anemic payrolls growth. In a recent report, the St. Louis Fed updated previous research on the breakeven level for job growth. The bank's economists now think that number could be as low ...
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