America added 431,000 jobs in March, bringing the unemployment rate to a new pandemic low

America's labor market is roaring back, adding another 431,000 jobs in March and bringing the unemployment rate to a new pandemic-era low of 3.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Even though the job gains were lower than economists had expected, they still rounded up a strong first quarter for the US labor market with an average monthly gain of more than half a million jobs. March was the 15th straight month of robust job gains.

The economy is now just 1.6 million jobs short of where it was in February 2020, before the pandemic hit. That means the country is on pace to bounce back from the pandemic recession almost eight years faster than it took to recover from the Great Recession.

Several labor market measures are already close to their pre-Covid levels, the BLS said Friday. That includes the total number of unemployed people, which fell to 6 million in March, as well as the number of permanent job losers, which declined to 1.4 million.