{"id":3280,"date":"2026-04-03T21:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3280"},"modified":"2026-04-03T21:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:00:10","slug":"march-job-gains-mask-a-volatile-labor-market-as-iran-war-chaos-mounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3280","title":{"rendered":"March Job Gains Mask a Volatile Labor Market as Iran War Chaos Mounts"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Today\u2019s jobs report shows the labor market added 178,000 jobs in March, and February\u2019s losses significantly revised down, revealing a decrease of 133,000 jobs. The unemployment rate remained mostly unchanged at 4.3%, with unemployment at its weakest pace since 2020. As hiring stalls, the share of workers who say it\u2019s harder to find jobs has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conference-board.org\/topics\/consumer-confidence\/index.cfm\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">increased<\/a> sharply, and the number of workers who have given up on the labor market entirely increased by 40% in the last month alone. Paychecks are stalling as prices <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/03\/25\/fertilizer-price-iran-war-food-security-inflation-urea-potash-nitrogen-farmers.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">rise <\/a>from Trump\u2019s war with Iran and continued <a href=\"https:\/\/kpmg.com\/kpmg-us\/content\/dam\/kpmg\/corporate-communications\/pdf\/2026\/Tariff%203.0%20survey_Media%20Deck_3.25.2026.pdf\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">uncertainty<\/a> over his tariffs, squeezing Americans from all sides.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Groundwork\u2019s Chief Economist <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/groundworkcollaborative.org\/person\/breyon-williams-ph-d\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Breyon Williams<\/strong><\/a><strong> released the following statement:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cBeyond today\u2019s headline bounce, the labor market continues to deteriorate under Trump\u2019s economic mismanagement: hiring has ground to a halt, paychecks are shrinking, and workers are giving up on finding a job altogether. A single month of modest gains can\u2019t reverse the damage that the president has inflicted on working families.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>BACKGROUND<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The March jobs report confirms a volatile labor market, as workers are at the whim of the president\u2019s chaos. <\/strong>Job growth remains inconsistent, with modest gains following sharp losses in February. This extends a stop-and-start pattern with gains one month followed by losses the next that has persisted since last June.\n<ul>\n<li>In the first quarter of this year, just 68,000 jobs have been added per month on average. This represents one of the weakest first quarters of job growth outside of a recession since 2003.<\/li>\n<li>The headline number overstates the health of the labor market as half of job gains were in the health care sector and driven by physicians returning from strike activity, a one-time bounce.<\/li>\n<li>The share of consumers who say jobs are currently hard to get <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conference-board.org\/topics\/consumer-confidence\/index.cfm\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">rose<\/a> to 21.5% in March, the highest in more than five years, according to The Conference Board. The share expecting fewer jobs in the next six months also climbed, and the number of consumers expecting a recession in the next 12 months is up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hiring has slowed to its weakest pace since 2020 as job openings vanish, leaving jobless workers out to dry.<\/strong> The number of marginally attached workers increased by 20% and discouraged workers by 40% in a single month.\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/jolts.nr0.htm\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">latest<\/a> Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data show the hiring rate fell to 3.1% in February. Job openings dropped to 6.9 million from 7.2 million the month before.<\/li>\n<li>As the job market slumps, it\u2019s taking workers longer to find a job: the average duration of unemployment spells is nearly four months and has increased by nearly 19% over the past year.<\/li>\n<li>For workers just entering the labor market, finding work is even more challenging: Entry-level job postings have <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2026\/03\/21\/entry-level-jobs-gen-z-not-their-fault\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">dried up<\/a>, leaving a generation of young workers locked out of careers before they can start.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Paychecks are stalling as inflation heats up.<\/strong> Average weekly earnings ticked slightly down in March as hourly earnings were roughly flat but hours declined. Shrinking paychecks will make the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/wall-st-week-ahead-inflation-focus-markets-jostled-by-middle-east-war-signals-2026-04-03\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">price hikes<\/a> caused by Trump\u2019s war on Iran even more painful for families who are already struggling to keep up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s jobs report shows the labor market added 178,000 jobs in March, and February\u2019s losses significantly revised down, revealing a decrease of 133,000 jobs. The unemployment rate remained mostly unchanged at 4.3%, with unemployment at its weakest pace since 2020. As hiring stalls, the share of workers who say it\u2019s harder to find jobs has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[742],"class_list":["post-3280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ciencia-y-tecnologia","tag-vr-news-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}