The March jobs report illustrated that hiring slowed, reportedly clouding optimism about the strength of America’s economic recovery. In the month of March, American employers added 120,000 jobs to the market, highlighting a significant slowdown in hiring from February, when the economy added 240,000 jobs, reported by the Labor Department on Friday. In the interim, the unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent as workers dropped out of the labor force. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney were expecting to see employers add 200,000 jobs in March and unemployment to fall to 8.2 percent.
On the upside, the public sector job losses are slowing. Layoffs within the government have finally began to slow down as the government only cut 1,000 jobs in March, while private businesses, which have continuously hired for two straight years, added 121,000 jobs. The job market remains in battle to get the 12.7 million unemployed Americans back to work, with 42.5 percent of them having been out of a job for six months or more. Of the 8.8 million jobs lost in the economy, about 3.6 million have been added back.
