Latest Jobs Report

U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday (April 1) that the U.S. economy is going full steam ahead. He praised the new jobs report that showed the U.S. economy added 431,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%.

Biden told reporters at the White House that the U.S. economy “is no longer just recovering, it’s moving.” He noted that when he took office about 15 months ago, the U.S. unemployment rate was 6.4 percent.

The unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, the fastest rate of decline of any president since the start of his term, he said.

The Labor Department also revised its estimates for employment numbers for January and February in its report Friday, with a combined upward revision of 95,000 jobs. That means the U.S. economy has added more than 500,000 jobs a month on average over the past three months and has added at least 400,000 jobs a month for 11 straight months, Biden said.

President Biden said the supply chain problems the U.S. has been facing could ease as more Americans come to work, and that could also help reduce inflation. Inflation in the U.S. is still hovering at nearly 8%, well above the long-term average U.S. inflation rate of 3.24%.

In another encouraging sign for the U.S. economy, 418,000 people started looking for jobs in March, and many did. Many people have remained out of the job market since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, a trend that has contributed to chronic worker shortages in many industries.

Biden said much of the good news on the economy was thanks to the American Jobs Plan passed by Congress last year to help control the pandemic, keep schools open and get people back to work.