We titled our nonfarm payroll preview post “a substantial bounce” and boy were we right: with consensus expecting a material rebound from February’s negative print (which was revised as usual worse, from -92K to -133K), what the BLS reported instead was a huge beat to expectations of a 65K increase, with March jobs reportedly rising by 178K, the biggest increase since December 2024.

The number was driven entirely by a surge in private workers which added 186K in March, far above estimates of 78K. Government workers continued to drop, sliding by 8K in March and now negative 8 of the past 9 months,

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/march-jobs-shocker-payrolls-soar-178k-most-2024-blowing-away-all-estimates-unemployment