Happily, the US added far more jobs than anyone thought possible in March, according to Friday’s payrolls release, which had the potential to turn the worst stock selloff since 2020 into an outright meltdown had the headline printed a meaningful miss.

Instead, traders were treated to a huge beat when the BLS said the world’s largest economy created 228,000 new positions last month.

That was a mile ahead of consensus and well above the highest guess from 78 economists who ventured a forecast. The range was 140,000 to 200,000.

The headline readouts for the prior two months were revised down by a combined 48,000. The three-month average now stands at 152,000.

Hiring was most pronounced in health care and social assistance, which is to say occupations some GOPers don’t value as much as they probably should. Retail added 24,000 jobs and federal payrolls contracted, even as most of the government job cuts won’t show up in the survey until the impacted workers stop being paid, and that’s months down the road.

The figures came on the heels of a Challenger report which showed job cut announcements soared another 60% in March after a near 250% increase in February, and two days after ADP’s tally of private hiring came in ahead of estimates. Private payrolls growth was likewise strong in Friday’s release, printing 209,000 against the 135,000 consensus. (The highest guess for that readout was 180,000.)

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% MoM and 3.8% YoY. The former was in-line, the latter two tenths cooler than expected.

The unemployment rate rounded up to 4.2%. Unrounded, it was 4.152% not much higher than February’s 4.139%. The participation rate edged up to 62.5%, ahead of consensus. That probably negates the incrementally foreboding read-across from the UNR round-up. Household survey employment rebounded from a decline to show a 201,000 gain.

Superficially, at least, this was a decent report. Better than decent, really. I’m just not sure it’s going to matter considering how poor sentiment is. The labor market’s a lagging indicator anyway, and traders will probably view these numbers as hopelessly stale considering the extent to which the macro environment shifted this week.

The view among many in light of the tariff escalations is that the die’s cast for the US economy, and maybe for the global economy too.