Hiring Just Hit a Level Not Seen Since the Economy Was ‘Closed Down Literally’ During COVID, Says Chief Economist at Navy Federal Credit Union
https://fortune.com/2026/03/31/hiring-hits-pandemic-low-layoffs-firing-jobs-report-inflation-iran-war-federal-reserve/
Posted by T_Shurt
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From the article:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday that Americans are not getting hired for jobs, and the numbers haven’t been this bad since the pandemic forcibly closed the economy.
The U.S. hiring rate fell to 3.1% in February, according to the [Bureau of Labor Statistics report](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm), with only 4.8 million hires, the lowest since April 2020.
“To see that 3.1% hiring rate, the lowest since April 2020, when the economy was closed down literally during COVID—it just underscores how little hiring is going on,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union told *Fortune*.
“Aside from the 2020 dip, the hires level has not been this low since 2014, when the labor market was still recovering from the Great Recession,” wrote Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at ZipRecruiter.
Hires are down, job openings are flat. Suggests that if businesses are letting positions go unfilled, either they can’t find candidates (which means wage growth in the near future), businesses are worried about the near term (recession probability), or they are replacing humans with AI.
We’re about to get a fuller picture tomorrow.
But this also comes after some of the strongest low wage real wage growth in a while, since 2019. So I imagine the lack of hiring is more a function of uncertainty around current economic paths.
Edit: hires are way down in construction and leisure/accommodation services. Both are getting hit hard with recent supply shocks. Table 2 on the original BLS report.