The US economy added a stronger-than-expected total of 228,000 jobs in March, a significant increase from February’s revised gains of 117,000, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.
The White House touted the jobs report, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt writing in an X post that “the President’s push to onshore jobs here in the United States is working.”
However, US stocks are set to plunge Friday as markets remain focused on President Donald Trump’s trade war, which escalated after China retaliated against the United States.
The unemployment rate ticked higher to 4.2% from 4.1%.
Economists were expecting job growth to slow to 130,000 in March and for the unemployment rate to tick up to 4.2%, according to FactSet.
March’s report marks another solid month of job gains and a continuation of a historic growth of the labor market. The US has now added jobs for 51 months in a row, marking the second-longest expansion on record, BLS data shows.
Whether that continues, however, remains to be seen.
Recent economic data has indicated that uncertainty and layoffs are on the rise amid some monumental policy shifts from the Trump administration, including large-scale federal layoffs, funding cutbacks, mass deportations, and tariffs. One of the biggest potential shocks came just this week when Trump imposed a colossal set of new tariffs on America’s trading partners.
While the ripple effects from tariffs and immigration-related activities could take longer to show up in the data, the federal workforce reductions have already started appearing. The sector has posted job losses for two consecutive months, dropping 11,000 jobs in February and 1,000 jobs in March, BLS data shows. In February, the sector posted a loss of 11,000 jobs.
