Now Hiring sign in a supermarket window in Queens, New York.
Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The U.S. job market continues to chug ahead without signs of overheating — a good sign for workers and the U.S. economy, according to economists.
While the market has cooled from its breakneck pace of the “great resignation” era, employers are adding ample jobs to their payrolls, unemployment hovers near historical lows, and worker buying power (so-called “real” wage growth) is steadily rising, economists said.
“This is still a labor market that’s very attractive, especially historically speaking, for workers,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
“There’s still strong, broad-based job growth and real wage growth has been restored,” Pollak said. “I think that’s very, very good news.”
Employers added 303,000 jobs to payrolls in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That’s the largest monthly gain since January 2023.
Job growth in the first three months of 2024 — 274,000, on average — beats the 2019 pre-pandemic average by more than 100,000.
The U.S. unemployment rate declined to 3.8% in March, from 3.9% in February. Unemployment has been below 4% — a historically low mark — for more than two years.
“That’s an exceptionally long period of such tight labor markets,” Pollak said.
Those conditions are pushing employers to make “very attractive” offers to new hires and proactively recruit prospective candidates, she…
