The Jobs Report – March 2022

Highlight

The economy added 431K jobs in March, which was below the consensus estimate of 490K.

What you need to know:

• The private sector added 426K jobs which also missed the consensus estimate of 496K.
• The prior two months were revised up by 95K, helping to moderate this slightly disappointing March report.
• Average hourly earnings increased 5.6% from last March. With CPI at 7.9% year-over-year, earnings are failing to keep up with inflation.
• Private service-producing jobs were 366K, a sharp deceleration from the prior two months.
• The Leisure and hospitality segment again led in job growth with 112K jobs added.
• Goods-producing was notably weaker than last month at 60K jobs vs 102K for February.
• Retail trade’s March job growth of 49K was well below January’s 121K and February’s 110K.
• Although job growth remains solid, the Fed may be most concerned about the loss of purchasing power by wage earners due to inflation. We believe they will continue to be aggressive in tightening monetary policy throughout 2022.