Below, EPI president Heidi Shierholz shares her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 236,000 jobs added in March. Read the full Twitter thread here. 

The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5% in March—near a 50-year low—and all for good reasons. The labor force participation rate and the employment-to-population ratio both rose. 2/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) April 7, 2023

THIS IS IMPORTANT: The labor market is strong, but it’s not “too hot.” We know this because wage growth is slowing. We can absolutely sustain the kind of labor market tightness we are seeing today, if the Fed doesn’t stand in the way (or hasn’t already). 4/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) April 7, 2023

One point of concern: Though state and local govt jobs increased by 39,000 in March, there is still a big gap—they are down 362,000 since Feb ‘20, with two-thirds of that, 241,000, in education. 6/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) April 7, 2023

Unlike in the aftermath of the Great Recession, state and local governments today have the fiscal resources to raise pay enough to be able to refill those jobs. They just need to do it! 8/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) April 7, 2023

Make no mistake, the Black unemp rate is still too high. Due to the impact of structural racism on the labor market, Black & Hispanic wrkrs have much higher unemp rates than white wrkrs. But the strength of this recovery has led to progress on reducing racial employment gaps. 10/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) April 7, 2023

This chart blows my mind. It shows the prime-age employment-to-population ratio. From the end of the Great Recession, it took 10 years, 4 months to regain the pre-recession prime age EPOP. This time around, it took 2 years and 11 months. The difference is staggering. 12/ pic.twitter.com/iNtX29dASy

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) April 7, 2023