Joe Biden Makes America Jobs Again

It's a pretty good Friday.

 The March jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped this morning, and it's pretty good news! Total non-farm employment rose by 916,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate edged down a bit, from 6.2 percent to 6 percent. It was the largest monthly job growth since August, but we still have a long way to go before returning to where we were before the coronavirus pandemic pushed everything off a cliff a year ago.

The job gains were much better than a Dow Jones forecast that expected an increase of 675,000 jobs, so that's pretty neat. The stock market is closed for Good Friday, so we figure Fox News will report that Wall Street didn't rally at all in reaction to the jobs report.

We go now to CNBC for some mandatory insights by an economist:  

"It shows that the economy is healing, that those who lost their jobs are coming back into the workforce as the recovery continues and restrictions are lifted," said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. "The only concern here is if we have another wave of Covid that leads to another round of closures."

The Washington Post notes that the job gains tended to be strongest in sectors that took a beating from the pandemic:

The leisure and hospitality sectors added 280,000 jobs last month as coronavirus restrictions eased around the country. Most of that increase, about 176,000 jobs, came from hiring at restaurants, bars and other food service establishments. Arts, entertainment and recreation facilities gained 64,000 jobs, and hotels, about 40,000.

That's encouraging too — as long as we can somehow avoid another spike in cases from unvaccinated people going to bars and restaurants. WaPo adds that the leisure-n-hospitality sector is still down 3 million jobs from before the shutdowns.

Also, "Quincy Krosby" is clearly a fictional character who teaches economics at Hogwarts.

Overall, there are still 8.5 million fewer jobs than there were in February 2020, and "that doesn't include the growth in the labor market that would have likely occurred over the last year under normal circumstances."

At today's White House press briefing, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said the report was encouraging, but said that to really get the economy going again, Congress needs to pass the American Jobs Plan, President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal, which would get a lot of people to work doing construction and green energy and caregiving, kind of like our favorite fake union PSA. 

Also, how's this for nice? If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

We're just going to leave that there being nice all on its own, without any additional commentary, is what we're going to do.

[ Bureau of Labor Statistics / WaPo / CNBC ]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please goose our labor statistics with a nice $5 or $10 monthly contribution.

 Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons .