Despite a Boost in March Hiring, Annual Job Gains Remain Below Last Year’s Pace

U.S. employers added twice the number of jobs in March than they did during the first two months of the year, but annual gains remain below last year’s pace and behind pre-pandemic norms. Employers added roughly 228,000 workers to payrolls in March 2025, according to a survey of businesses by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those additions were double the average of 114,000 jobs added in January and February and were well above the roughly 130,000 to 140,000 job gains expected by economists. The U.S. economy has now added jobs for 51 consecutive months, the second-longest period of job base expansion on record dating back to 1939, following the 113-month stretch that ended with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Education/Health Services sector (+77,000 jobs) added the most jobs in March, while Information and Mining/Logging were the only major industries to lose jobs (both down by 2,000 jobs). Despite the loss of 4,000 Federal Government jobs in March (which followed 11,000 job cuts in February), the Government sector overall gained 19,000 jobs during the month. However, federal employees who have been placed on paid leave or severance by the Trump administration were still counted as employed. On an annual basis, U.S. employers added roughly 1.88 million jobs or an average of nearly 157,000 jobs per month. That annual gain was down from the nearly 2.4 million jobs added a year earlier and registered below the pre-pandemic average of 2.4 million from 2015 to 2019. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate (U3 or headline unemployment rate, which is seasonally adjusted, and is a survey of households) rose from 4.1% in February to 4.2% in March.

This post is part of a series analyzing employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For more on this data, read previous posts on Job Growth.