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March's unemployment rate was 4.2%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday, April 4. That was slightly higher than the 4.1% forecast as the labor force participation rate also rose, CNBC reported.
The US added 228,000 nonfarm payrolls in March, significantly higher than the Dow Jones estimate of around 140,000. The BLS also reduced January and February's data by a combined 48,000 jobs, lowering January’s total from 125,000 to 111,000 and February’s from 151,000 to 117,000.
The March gains were fueled by healthcare (about 54,000 jobs), social assistance (24,000), and transportation and warehousing (23,000). Retail trade also added 24,000 jobs, boosted by striking workers returning to food and beverage jobs, according to the BLS.
The jobs numbers didn't calm the spiraling stock market.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average quickly fell 3.4%, losing about 1,356 points by 10:30 a.m. on April 4. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.1% (around 685 points), and the S&P 500 tumbled 4.0% (almost 215 points) in the first hour of trading.
The losses followed likely the worst day on Wall Street since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic crashed the stock market on Monday, March 16, 2020, MarketWatch reported. Trump's "liberation day" tariff announcement sparked an enormous sell-off, wiping out about $2.5 trillion from US equity markets.
On Thursday, April 3, the S&P 500 dropped 4.8%, the Dow Jones lost about 4%, and the Nasdaq plummeted 6%. The Russell 2000, which tracks about 2,000 of the country's smallest publicly traded companies, plunged 6.6%.
The "Magnificent Seven" tech companies – Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Tesla – lost a combined $848 billion on April 3. That's the group's worst single-day drop ever, surpassing the previous record of $760 billion lost on Monday, March 10.
Nvidia and Tesla fell about 6%. Apple dropped 8%, while other major tech firms posted steep declines amid investor panic and falling confidence.
The US dollar slid against many major currencies, including the euro, Japan's yen, the UK's pound, China's yuan, Mexico's peso, Switzerland's franc, and the Canadian dollar.
The market crash came after Trump announced his broad tariff package, which included a 10% tariff on imports from around 185 countries, along with a 25% duty on all foreign-made cars and light trucks. The tariffs unveiled on what he dubbed "liberation day" also contained steep increases for top trade partners, with China's effective import duty jumping to 54%.
Despite March's job gains, broader signs point to economic trouble.
Business Insider reported that JPMorgan has elevated its US recession odds to 60% in a note titled "There Will Be Blood." Before Trump's tariff announcement, Goldman Sachs raised its recession odds to 35% and slashed its gross domestic product forecast to 1.0%.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas said 275,240 job cuts were announced in March – the third-highest monthly total since the outplacement firm began tracking the data in 1989. Most layoffs came from billionaire Elon Musk's purging of federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency.
A University of Michigan survey in March found that two-thirds of Americans expect unemployment to rise in 2025 – the highest share since the global financial crisis. Consumer confidence has also dropped to its lowest point in 12 years, according to The Conference Board.
The BLS data also said average hourly earnings rose 0.3% to $36.00 in March, but around 4.8 million people worked part-time for economic reasons, and about 5.9 million not in the workforce said they wanted a job.
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