March closed with the creation of 236,000 jobs and the unemployment rate at 3.5%.

TheU.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, the Labor Department reported Friday. Thus, the working population reached its highest level since before the onset of the pandemic.

However, there are some signs of a slowdown as this is the smallest monthly increase in employment since December 2020.

As reported by the Department of Labor, employment continued to increase in the leisure and hospitality, public administration, professional and business services, and health care sectors.

Among major groups, the Hispanic unemployment rate declined to 4.6% in March, offsetting the previous month's increase, according to the Labor Department. Unemployment rates for adult men (3.4%), adult women (3.1%), teenagers (9.8%), whites (3.2%), blacks (5.0%), and Asians (2.8%) showed little or no change over the month.

Among the unemployed, the number of permanently unemployed increased by 172,000, reaching a total of 1.6 million in March, and the number of re-entrants into the labor force (people who were working but not in the labor force before starting their job search) decreased by 182,000, to 1.7 million.

The number of long-term unemployed (unemployed for 27 weeks or more) hardly changed, standing at 1.1 million in March. These people represent 18.9% of the total number of unemployed.