{"id":429219,"date":"2026-04-03T19:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/04\/us-march-non-farm-payrolls-178k-vs-60k-expected\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T19:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:40:06","slug":"us-march-non-farm-payrolls-178k-vs-60k-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/us-march-non-farm-payrolls-178k-vs-60k-expected-429219\/","title":{"rendered":"US March non-farm payrolls +178K vs +60K expected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/investinglive.com\/news\/us-january-non-farm-payrolls-92k-vs-59k-expected-20260306\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"follow\">Prior <\/a>-92K (revised to -133K)<\/li>\n<li>Two-month net revision -7K<\/li>\n<li>January was +126K (revised to +160K). December was -141K <\/li>\n<li>Unemployment rate 4.3% vs 4.4% expected. <\/li>\n<li>Prior unemployment rate 4.4%.  <\/li>\n<li>Unrounded unemployment % vs 4.441% prior<\/li>\n<li>Participation rate 61.9% vs 62.0% prior<\/li>\n<li>U6 underemployment rate 8.0% vs 7.9% prior<\/li>\n<li>Average hourly earnings +0.2% m\/m vs +0.3% expected<\/li>\n<li>Average hourly earnings +3.5% y\/y vs +3.7% expected<\/li>\n<li>Average weekly hours 34.2 vs 34.3 expected<\/li>\n<li>Change in private payrolls +186K vs +70K expected<\/li>\n<li>Change in manufacturing payrolls +15K vs -5K expected<\/li>\n<li>Government payrolls -8K vs -6K in February<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sectors:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Health care: +76K vs -28K prior<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Construction: +26K vs -13K prior (revised from -11K)<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Social assistance: +14K vs +9K prior (revised to +5K)<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Financial activities: -15K vs +2K prior (revised from 0K)<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Transportation and warehousing: +21K vs -49K prior (revised from -11K)<\/li>\n<li class=\"whitespace-normal break-words pl-2\">Professional and business services: +2K vs +7K prior (revised from 0K)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The U.S. nonfarm payrolls report, published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is one of the most closely watched economic indicators in the world. It measures the net change in the number of employed people across nearly all sectors of the economy, excluding farm workers, private household employees, and nonprofit organization employees. The report, formally known as the Employment Situation, draws on two surveys: the establishment survey, which produces the payrolls figure from a sample of roughly 119,000 businesses, and the household survey, which generates the unemployment rate from interviews with about 60,000 households.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">The labor market entered 2026 in a weakened state. A major benchmark revision released with the January report revealed that 2025 job growth had been significantly overstated, with the full-year gain revised down from roughly 584,000 to just 181,000 \u2014 an average of about 15,000 jobs per month. Federal government employment has been a persistent drag, declining by approximately 330,000, or 11 percent, since peaking in October 2024 as the administration pursued workforce reductions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]\">February&#8217;s report showed the economy shedding 92,000 jobs, the third decline in five months and well below expectations of a roughly 59,000 gain. A Kaiser Permanente strike sidelined over 30,000 healthcare workers, and severe winter weather weighed on construction and other sectors. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent from 4.3 percent in January. On the positive side, wages continued to grow, with average hourly earnings rising 0.4 percent for the month and 3.8 percent year-over-year, both slightly above forecasts.<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior -92K (revised to -133K) Two-month net revision -7K January was +126K (revised to +160K). December was -141K Unemployment rate 4.3% vs 4.4% expected. Prior unemployment rate 4.4%. Unrounded unemployment % vs&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}