March Jobless Rate Holds Steady at 4.1% --- Creation of New Positions Was Highest in 4 Years; Special Factors Are Cited
WASHINGTON -- The jobless rate continues to hover near its 30-year low, but new government data don't shed much light on whether it will fall still further in the months to come.</br></br>The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% in March despite the creation of 416,000 new jobs, the sharpest monthly gain in more than four years, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate has been at or below 4.5% for 24 months in a row. Most economists had expected the jobless rate to slip back to 4% in March, which would have tied a 30-year-low set in January, and many still project a 4% rate for April.</br></br>The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits, meanwhile, fell to a 27-year-low for the week ending April 1, lending further credence to the argument that the labor market may still be contracting.</br></br>Still, there's another plausible interpretation. March's surge in payroll growth comes on the heels of a weaker-than-expected February increase of just 7,000 jobs, revised downwards from a previous estimate of 43,000 new positions. And while more jobs were created in March than in any month since February 1996, when 454,000 new positions were added to business payrolls, the number may be significantly overstated.</br></br>The Census Bureau, for example, hired 117,000 temporary workers in March, while a statistical quirk gave the month a fiveweek survey period instead of the customary four-week period, adding about 75,000 jobs. Stripping away such factors brings the actual number of new positions down to a more moderate 224,000. Indeed, excluding all special factors, payroll growth slowed to about 190,000 per month in the first quarter of this year, compared with an average of 226,000 per month in 1999.