Revised Data Shows US Jobs Down 173,000 Through March

Job growth in the United States was apparently weaker in the year through March, with the number of new workers added to payrolls revised down by 173,000, Bloomberg reported. That number comes out to around 14,400 per month.

The revisions cover a long and varied span of time, including the record-length economic expansion as well as the first signs of the tumultuous, wide-spanning job losses that came almost immediately with the pandemic in mid-March.

Nonfarm payroll employment was boosted by 73,000 a month in the year ending in March, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as reported by Bloomberg. That number was hampered by the pandemic, when people were told to stay home to avoid spreading the virus and 1.37 million jobs were eliminated for the same reason as the country slid into recession.

Before the pandemic, though, things were different, with around 200,000 new people added to payrolls every month, with companies complaining about not being able to find enough skilled workers to fill the jobs, Bloomberg reported. There was about a 144,400 upward revision for transportation and warehousing jobs. That was able to offset a 125,000 decline for professional and business services and a 118,000 downward revision for education and housing jobs.

The unemployment rate seemed to be looking up in August, as it fell to 10 percent from its high of close to 15 percent around April. The bureau said the numbers represented the economy’s continuing resurgence after the pandemic initially pulled everything to a stop.

The biggest gains occurred in the fields of leisure and hospitality, government, retail, professional and business services.

Jobless claims finally began falling this month for two consecutive weeks for the first time since March, too, according to PYMNTS. However, economist Mark Hamrick said people should be watching out for surges in the coronavirus during the fall as the weather cools, which could jeopardize the slightly-improving numbers.