Businesses Add 308,000 Jobs in March

Friday, April 02, 2004



WASHINGTON - U.S. employment rose last month at the fastest pace in nearly
four years, easily outstripping expectations, as workers returned after a
grocery store strike and construction hiring bounced back on better weather,
a government report on Friday showed.

The latest report from the Labor Department offered comfort to President
George W. Bush (search) as the jobs market - a hot political issue in the
U.S. presidential campaign - finally made a decisive break to the upside.

Non-farm payrolls climbed 308,000 in March, the Labor Department said, the
biggest gain since April 2000 and well above the 103,000 rise expected on
Wall Street.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.7 percent from the two-year low of 5.6
percent seen in January and February.

Upward revisions to January and February payrolls helped contribute to the
positive tone of the report, which could fuel expectations that the Federal
Reserve may be closer to raising overnight interest rates from their current
1958 low of 1 percent than had been thought.

The March rise in payrolls reflected the resolution of a labor dispute at
grocery stores in southern California that had idled 72,000 workers. The
department said the return of those workers helped fuel a 47,000 increase in
retail employment last month, but it did not quantify the impact.

Economists had said the return of those workers would boost payrolls, but
that the impact was hard to gauge because it was unclear how many temporary
replacement workers were being let go.

The report showed job gains were widespread across industries.

While a long-hoped for rise in manufacturing employment did not appear, the
department said factory payrolls were unchanged in March, finally breaking a
string of 43 consecutive monthly declines.