Finally, the U.S. labor market has some concrete job growth. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic, there is 162,000 new jobs in American in March. However, this number is still insufficient compare with consensus expectations, which predicted about 190,000 more jobs. Even though employers added a significant amount of jobs to their payrolls last month, the growth wasn’t robust enough to lower the unemployment rate, which was unchanged at 9.7%, as economists had expected.

The fact that the unemployment rate stayed at the elevated level of 9.7% likely signals that the job growth wasn’t enough to offset a flood of unemployed workers from returning to the job market. An estimated 3 million workers quit searching for jobs altogether during the downturn. 

More robust job growth will be needed to recapture the millions of jobs that were slashed during the recession as companies cut costs to deal with falling demand. However, March’s employment figures did exceed the 120,000 jobs that must be created just to keep up with population growth. 

Reference link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36146930/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/