The US added 228,000 jobs in March, which was a lot more than the 140,000 economists had been expecting. Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Alexandra Canal breaks down which sectors saw the most hiring in the month.
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Well, a little over 15 minutes ago, we got the March jobs report. Coming in better than estimated at 228,000 jobs being added in March. Economists were only looking for 140,000 jobs. The unemployment rate did tick up to 4.2%, which Greg Dako of EY just told us was a function of more people entering the labor force. So not necessarily a bad sign. Um, our own Alexandra Canal joining us now for a deeper dive into the numbers. A lot of questions, Ali, about government jobs. So let's start there.
Government jobs. Yeah, that's where I want to start because within federal government, we saw employment decline by 4,000 in March. That followed a loss of 11,000 jobs in February. Now, while many federal layoffs have been announced, uh, we shouldn't really expect that this is the end here because over the coming months, the coming weeks, we're going to see more of the impact. There have been some layoffs that have yet to occur. Some workers have been placed on administrative leave, so they're still accounted in these payrolls. So we could continue to see that deterioration on the federal government side in the months to come, not necessarily encapsulated in this March report. We could also see a potential spillover effect when we think about sectors like healthcare and education. And to that point, healthcare was once again a leader here in the jobs market, adding 54,000 jobs in March. This was slightly ahead of the average monthly gain of 52,000 over the prior 12 months. So very strong. Specifically within healthcare, we saw employment trend up in ambulatory healthcare services. That was by 20,000. Hospitals increased by 17,000 and nursing and residential care facilities also up by 17,000. Now heading into this report, it's clear markets had other things on the brain, tariffs, the potential impact where we could see with inflation on the on the growth side as well. And inflation that's going to impact different areas and different sectors of the labor market, like retail, for example, if we see consumers pull back, construction as well, if the cost of homes rise significantly. So, uh, for the month of March, retail trade, they added 24,000 jobs. This is a very significant rebound from February as workers returned from a strike. We had a 21,000 gain in food and beverage retailers, whereas general merchandise lost 5,000 jobs. On a year-over-year basis, we were little change, then a very quick mention of manufacturing. We know that that's been a big push from these tariffs and President Trump. He wants to bring manufacturing back to the US. Little change there. Just 1,000 jobs added. So we'll continue to see what materializes in the months ahead, but this report very strong, uh, a beacon of hope, uh, right now in a sea of red on Wall Street.