The U.S. economy added 228,000 jobs in March, exceeding expectations, just as President Donald Trump’s announcement of across-the-board tariffs has sent global markets reeling.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the unemployment rate jumped from 4.1 percent in February to 4.2 percent in March. The labor force participation rate, which accounts for the number of people who either have a job or are looking for one, jumped 0.1 percent from 62.4 percent to 62.5 percent.
The numbers exceeded expectations since ADP had projected that the economy would add just 155,000 jobs. The White House touted the positive jobs report in a statement on Friday morning.
“The economy is starting to roar with a strong 228,000 jobs added in the month of March — well ahead of the market's expectation,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The President's push to onshore jobs here in the United States is working. The Golden Age of America is on its way!”
The White House specifically celebrated the increase in transportation and warehousing jobs, which grew by 23,000 in March. But it also said that construction employment increased, even though the report showed that the number of construction jobs changed little.
The report showed that the health care sector added 54,000 jobs, while social assistance jobs jumped by 24,000 jobs.
Hourly earnings rose by 0.3 percent and wages as a whole rose by 3.8 percent.
But the report also showed that federal government jobs dropped by 4,000 in March, which comes after the loss of another 11,000 federal jobs in February.
This comes as the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has taken a slash-and-burn approach to the federal government, quickly cutting tens of thousands of positions. The new jobs report does not account for people who are on paid leave or who are still receiving severance pay, as they are counted as employed.
March saw the highest number of layoffs since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, largely driven by DOGE.
In addition to the March report, the bureau revised down the number of jobs added in February from 151,000 to 117,000, a difference of 34,000 jobs. It also revised down the number of jobs added in January from 125,000 to 111,000 jobs, a difference of 14,000.
The jobs numbers account for the month of March, which ended two days before Trump announced his “Liberation Day,” revealing his plans to place 10 percent minimum tariffs on goods coming into the United States.
And that does not account for countries like China, which will have a total effective tariff of 54 percent, or Taiwan, which will have a tariff of 32 percent, under his new plan. On Friday, China announced that it would slap a 34 percent tariff on all U.S. goods in return.
The announcement caused stocks to tumble on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 1,679 points and the NASDAQ 1,050 points, its largest one-day drop.
The president has insisted that these tariffs will force companies to bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States. But economists have consistently said that the cost of tariffs will fall directly to consumers, causing inflation and a potential recession.
Fears over Trump’s tariff strategy were evident on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening when four Republicans joined every Democrat to pass legislation to roll back his tariffs on Canada.
-Ariana Baio contributed reporting
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