It’s the beginning of a new month, and that means we’re seeing new reports about the job numbers from March 2026. The headlines say that unemployment dropped from 4.4% in February to 4.3% in March. That is good and welcomed news. But, it is not the full story and I want to explain a bit more about what is behind that number.
It’s important to note that March’s 4.3% is a seasonally adjusted number. Seasonal adjustment is important because some employment changes every year on a regular schedule—like people who work for schools might always be out of work in July and August. The Bureau of Labor Statistics makes the adjustments because they want their report to reflect changes to the economy, not changes to the time of year. I do maintain some skepticism about whether their seasonal adjustment is appropriate.
A significant part of the change comes from several strikes from several hospitals concluding, where workers were out on strike in February. Workers were back at work in early March.
Here is the calculation (all of these figures are seasonally adjusted):
| February 2026 | March 2026 | |
| Civilian noninstitutional population | 274,766,000 | 274,858,000 |
| Civilian labor force | 170,483,000 | 170,087,000 |
| Participation rate | 62.0% | 61.9% |
| Employed | 162,912,000 | 162,848,000 |
| Employment-population ratio | 59.3% | 59.2% |
| Unemployed | 7,571,000 | 7,239,000 |
| Unemployment rate | 4.4% | 4.3% |
| Not in labor force | 104,283,000 | 104,771,000 |
| People who currently want a job | 5,974,000 | 6,040,000 |
If you look carefully —the actual number of people with jobs is down, not up. The unemployment rate is down NOT because a lot of people got jobs, but rather because a lot of people have given up looking for jobs and are no longer counted as being part of the labor force.
The population is up month over month. The number of people who want jobs is up month over month. But, this report misleadingly labels a lot of people as having left the labor force, when the reality is that they are discouraged and have given up looking.
Consider the Federal Reserve’s more expansive measure of unemployment: this data actually confirms that the unemployment has risen back to the level it was in the middle of President Trump’s first term as president (8%).
They also tell us that (on average) people are working fewer hours in March than they were in February. Therefore, they are (on average) earning less money per week in March than they were in February.
Effectively that means that the total amount of work being done is being divided among more people—with each person getting slightly less work to do than in the previous month.