Blog | 200,000 monthly jobs streak broken in March, 126,000 new jobs

The latest jobs numbers show a big slowdown in jobs growth in March, with 126,000 new jobs created..

Economists thought the number would be closer to 250,000.

The first two months of the year were also revised downward. The initial estimate for February was 295,000, which is now 264,000. In January, 201,000 new jobs were created instead of the initial estimate of 239,000.

There was solid wage growth in March.

It’s another first quarter slowdown after another long, hard winter. The question is will this slowdown be like last year’s, when the economy shrank 2.1 percent during the first three months before taking off again, including a 5 percent growth rate later in 2014, or will the slowdown be closer to what is now the economic consensus of about 1 percent growth followed by a sped up economy in the following quarters?

We’ll have to wait and see. The shorter term question is what does this do for the Federal Reserve and its decision on interest rates. It might mean a delay in increasing them. Stay tuned.

For a deeper dive into the jobs report, check out this Wall Street Journal blog.

Reuters is also Tweeting the report live here.

This story was originally published April 3, 2015 at 8:37 AM with the headline "Blog | 200,000 monthly jobs streak broken in March, 126,000 new jobs ."