- Private-sector payrolls grew by 455,000 in March, ADP said in its monthly hiring report.
- That beat the median forecast of 450,000 jobs and marked a slowdown from February gains.
- March saw the Fed tap the brakes on the economy as inflation lingered at four-decade highs.
Healthy job growth continued for the US private sector in March as the COVID-19 situation improved further and the
Federal Reserve
started to slow the economy.
Private-sector firms added 455,000 jobs through March, ADP said in its monthly hiring report on Wednesday. That landed just above the median forecast of 450,000 new jobs from economists surveyed by Bloomberg. It also showed job creation slowing somewhat from February’s revised increase of 486,000 payrolls.
March offered a stronger environment for employers looking to boost their ranks. Daily COVID-19 cases returned to levels not seen since the summer of 2021. Inflation remained at historic levels through the end of February, but Americans’ spending also picked up. The ADP data, while preliminary, suggests the jobs recovery was still robust through the end of the first quarter, and that the economic recovery is far from running out of steam.
The report is also the last to cover the period before the Fed started to slow the economy. The central bank raised its benchmark interest rate on March 16 for the first time since the pandemic began, ending the era of near-zero rates and kicking off its process of reining in economic support. The rate hikes aim to quell inflation by driving borrowing costs higher and cooling the economy. Yet they’re also expected to slow the recovery by dragging on demand. Gradually rising rates could lead to weaker job creation in the coming months as businesses face higher borrowing costs and slow the pace of rehiring.
That shouldn’t be enough to throw the recovery off entirely, Fed chair Jerome Powell said earlier in March. The US already has a “very, very tight labor market,” with job openings dramatically outweighing available workers, he said. Recent data suggests the economy is healthy enough to handle higher rates and avoid plunging into another
recession
Powell added.
“All signs are that this is a strong economy, one that will be able to flourish — not to say withstand, but certainly flourish — in the face of less accommodative monetary policy,” he said.
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