The March 2024 Jobs Report & February 2024 JOLTS: The Current U.S. Employment Situation

The BLS’s March 2024 U.S job numbers showed a booming 303,000 jobs were added last month – much higher than expectations. Unemployment ticked back down to 3.8% and the number of unemployed people also decreased to 6.4 million.

The reactions to March’s 2024 jobs report have been optimistic, including from President Joe Biden who released a statement this morning on the U.S. employment situation:

“Today’s report marks a milestone in America’s comeback…With today’s report of 303,000 new jobs in March, we have passed the milestone of 15 million jobs created since I took office…Unemployment has been under 4% for the longest stretch in more than 50 years. Wages are going up. Inflation has come down significantly.”
 

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS), released Tuesday, showed slight increases in core metrics with 8.8 million job openings, 5.8 million hires, and 5.6 million total separations. Quits remained steady at 3.5 million and at a rate of 2.2% for the fourth consecutive month.

Here are additional U.S. jobs data takeaways from the reports:

• Finance and insurance openings increased by 126,000, state and local government (excluding education) openings increased by 91,000, and arts, entertainment, and recreation openings increased by 51,000.
• Leisure and hospitality employment has returned to its pre-pandemic February 2020 level.
• While the overall unemployment rate decreased to 3.8%, the unemployment rate for Blacks increased to 6.4%.
• Wages increased 0.3% in March, outperforming February’s growth of 0.1%.

The top industries hiring now are health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, government, and construction. The manufacturing and information sectors saw no change in employment while utilities decreased slightly.

Whether you’re looking to hire or make a career move, keep the momentum going with iHire’s industry-focused solutions for employers and job seekers.