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Industries hit hard by the pandemic continued their rebound.

The jobs report released Friday — which showed U.S. employers added 431,000 jobs in March on a seasonally adjusted basis — received a round of applause from many economists and labor market analysts, cooling off fears of a major slowdown in growth. And it spurred hope in the service sector that good times may be back again, and stick around more sustainably.

After experiencing nearly two years of stop-and-go reopenings — optimistic bursts of in-person activity as the virus ebbed, followed by fearful drawbacks as it rose again — experts say that the broadest swath of consumers yet may be returning to the sort of in-person activity that defined their Before Times lives: The sectors that cover travel, live entertainment, indoor dining, museums and historical sites, bars and other drinking places all saw major boosts.

The leisure and hospitality sector saw the largest gains in March.

Change in jobs from February to March, by sector

+112,000

Leisure and hospitality

+102,000

Business services

+53,000

Education and health care

+49,000

Retail

+38,000

Manufacturing

+19,000

Construction

+6,000

State and local government

Data is seasonally adjusted.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

By Ella Koeze

While the headline numbers were largely unsurprising, there’s plenty of good news for job seekers “if you dig a little bit deeper and look at a sector level,” said Michelle Meyer, U.S. chief economist for the Mastercard Economics Institute. “A quarter of the job creation was in leisure and hospitality.” The sector added 112,000 jobs in March.

“There’s still more work to be done,” she said. Employment in leisure and hospitality is still down 1.5 million from prepandemic levels. But the robust growth “speaks to the fact that there’s still a lot of room for expansion in terms of labor market growth in that industry given what we’re seeing in consumer interest to go back and engage.”

Parts of the labor market that were already strong generally got stronger: Professional and business services added 102,000 jobs in March, and retail trade employment added 49,000 workers to its payrolls.

Retail and business services sectors are now above their prepandemic job levels.

Cumulative change in jobs since before the pandemic, by industry

–1 mil.

–2

–3

–4

–5

–6

–7

–8

April

Jan. ’21

Jan. ’22

Leisure and hospitality

+112,000
in March

17 million jobs in Feb. 2020

–2

–1 mil.

April

Jan. ’21

Jan. ’22

Construction

+19,000

7.6 million

–2

–1 mil.

April

Jan. ’21

Jan. ’22

Retail

+49,000

15.6 million

–2

–1 mil.

April

Jan. ’21

Jan. ’22

Manufacturing

+38,000

12.8 million

–2

–1 mil.

April

Jan. ’21

Jan. ’22

Business and professional services

+102,000

21.4 million

–2

–1 mil.

April

Jan. ’21

Jan. ’22

Education and health

+53,000

24.6 million

–2

–1 mil.

April

Jan. ’21

Jan. ’22

State and local government

+6,000

20 million

Data is seasonally adjusted.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

By Ella Koeze

Source: Economy - nytimes.com


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