Overall hiring across the world’s largest economy reaccelerated dramatically last month after a sharp decline, the BLS said Friday.

The 178,000 net job addition for March counted as the best establishment survey headline since Donald Trump’s second inaugural. Consensus expected just 65,000. That beat — 113,000 — was the biggest since January of 2024.

February’s drop, already the second-largest since 2020 as initially reported, was revised to show an even sharper, 133,000, decline. January’s robust print was revised meaningfully higher, though. It now shows a 160,000-job gain.

The three-month average, which had slipped near the flatline in February, recovered to 68,000, the highest in 11 months.

The private payrolls print from the BLS showed a 186,000 gain, triple the ADP headline for March and more than double consensus.

Not surprisingly, the breakdown showed most of the hiring was in health care, social assistance and construction. Transportation and warehousing chipped in 21,000. Even manufacturing managed a gain.

Another 18,000 people fell off government payrolls. Federal government employment’s now down by 355,000 from the Biden-era peak, or about 12%.

Average hourly earnings rose a cooler-than-expected 0.2% MoM and 3.5% YoY. That’s good news to the extent it takes some of the “sting” out of the big headline hiring beat vis-à-vis a monetary policy narrative which turned overtly hawkish last month amid a war-driven surge in energy costs.

On the household survey side, the unemployment rate moved back lower to 4.3%. Unrounded, that print was 4.256%, down markedly from February, when the UNR came perilously close to a 4.5% “round-up moment” (4.441%).

Participation moved down again, slipping below 62% for the first time since November of 2021.

Although bears will surely point to the household survey employment level — which fell again after a steep decline in February — no one trades that print. The household survey employment readout is useful mostly as a web traffic generator for bear blogs and for social media accounts run by people who seek self-affirmation in the number next to the “X” heart icon. (“Yikes! Ease up, man!” someone beseeched. To which I’ll reply, “If the shoe fits. Grown men should grow up. I did. It just took forever.”)

Friday’s BLS report is a tough one to nitpick, and even if you’re inclined, nobody will care. Because as BMO’s Ian Lyngen noted, “it’s a short trading session [for rates] with skeleton staffing and while the payrolls print is technically for March, the hiring decisions represented by the NFP figures were made” before the war.