Nonfarm payrolls are expected to bounce back — barely — in March as the bar keeps getting lower for what constitutes a healthy labor market.
The U.S. economy is projected to show job gains of 59,000 for the month, an anemic rate by the standards of previous years this decade but enough to keep the unemployment rate at 4.4%.
If the estimate is reasonably accurate, it actually would represent above-trend job growth for a labor market that has created virtually no jobs over the past year.
Immigration restrictions, shifting demographics and geopolitical uncertainty have left companies eager neither to hire nor fire workers en masse, resulting in a static labor market and a series of ho-hum monthly counts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS will release the number Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, though the stock market will be closed in observance of the Good Friday holiday.
“We have to revise our idea of what a good or bad job number is,” said Guy Berger, chief economist at Homebase, which provides workforce management services for small businesses.
