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Jobless Rate Likely Held Steady At 8.3 Percent In March, Economists Say

The morning's major news, if all goes as planned, will be the 8:30 a.m. ET release of the March jobs and unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to Reuters, economists expect we'll hear that the unemployment rate stayed at 8.3 percent and that private and public employers added about 200,000 jobs to their payrolls. The jobless rate's recent peak was 10 percent, in October 2009.

It's also possible we'll see some revisions to the February figures. When BLS issued its first take on job growth that month, it said payrolls grew by 227,000 jobs.

We'll pass along the news from this morning's report as soon as possible after it's released. Also keep an eye on Planet Money for it's take on the numbers.

On Morning Edition, NPR's John Ydstie reported that economists think job growth is going to slow a bit in coming months in part because employers have now refilled many of the positions they cut after the financial crisis of 2008 and will pause to see how the economy's doing before ramping up hiring again.

Update at 8:35 a.m. ET: While the jobless rate ticked down to 8.2 percent, just 120,000 jobs were added to payrolls, BLS says.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.