AA / Istanbul
Official figures showed on Friday that job growth in the United States slowed in March, posting the smallest increase in three months and reflecting the repercussions of the war in Ukraine on the world’s largest economy. world.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (affiliated with the Department of Labor) said non-farm economic sectors added 431,000 jobs in March, compared to 678,000 jobs in February and 510,000 jobs in January.
The bureau attributed the March employment increase to “gains in leisure and hospitality services, professional and business services, retail trade and manufacturing.”
US job growth was below analysts’ forecasts, which had forecast an increase of 490,000 jobs.
The new data showed that the unemployment rate in the United States fell 0.2% to 3.6% in March.
The unemployment rate, for its part, fell from 0.2% to 3.6% in March, to a level close to the rate recorded in February 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic, which was 3.5%.
The number of unemployed fell to 6 million people in March, a figure slightly higher than the figure recorded in February 2020 (which was 5.7 million people).
The U.S. dollar shored up its gains after the release of jobs data as the labor market recovery supports expectations of an acceleration of plans to tighten monetary policy and raise interest rates by the US Federal Reserve (Central Bank).
At 12:57 GMT, the dollar index, which measures the performance of the US currency against six major currencies, rose 0.25% to 98.6 points.
The return of the U.S. labor market to its pre-pandemic job-creating capacity, along with rising inflation, are the two main criteria driving interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
The rate of inflation in the United States increased to 7.9% last February on an annual basis, the highest rate since January 1982, and with a considerable deviation from the rate targeted by the Reserve federal government which is 2%.
* Translated from Arabic by Mounir Bennour.
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