U.S. payrolls fall 701K in March, unemployment rate rises 4.4%

The U.S. economy sheds jobs for the first time in a decade and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in March as the coronavirus pandemic escalates. Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith joins the On The Move panel to discuss the latest.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: We have to talk about that jobs number. And to do that, we're going to go to Jess Smith in Washington, DC. Jess.

JESSICA SMITH: Yeah, Adam. This report was far worse than economists had expected. Even though this survey was taken before we really started to see all of the stay-at-home orders and the layoffs, but still, it was a brutal report. Non-farm payrolls declined by 701,000. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4%. It was at 3.5% in February, so that is the biggest month over month increase in the unemployment rate since January of 1975.

And looking at some of the industries where we saw the biggest losses, of course, leisure and hospitality especially hard hit. That industry lost 459,000 jobs. Most of that being in the restaurant and bars. Restaurants and bars lost 417,000 jobs. That nearly offsets all of the gains that it saw for the past two years.

Health care and social assistance lost 61,000 jobs. Professional and business services lost 52,000. Retail lost 46,000. And manufacturing lost 18,000.

We did see government hiring increase, mainly because of the 2020 Census. Government hiring increased by 18,000. 17,000 of those were workers hired for the Census.

Labor force participation rate fell to 62.7% from 63.4% the month prior. And we did have some revisions. January was revised down by 59,000. February revised up by 2,000. So that's a total of 57,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

U6, the broadest measure of unemployment, came in at 8.7%, from 7% the month prior. But again, those big numbers, 701,000 jobs lost in March. The unemployment rate is at 4.4%.

Adam.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Jess, thank you very much.