Restaurants and bars added 50,300 jobs in March. / Photograph: Shutterstock.
Eating and drinking places again led the nation last month in job creation, adding 50,300 positions, or roughly one of every five jobs created across the economy, according to new federal data.
The hirings raised total restaurant and bar employment to within 75,000 positions of the tally for February 2020, a mere 0.6% below the pre-pandemic count, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported. It pegged current total employment within eating and drinking places at 12.3 million jobs.
The agency’s monthly recap showed that the economy as a whole added 236,000 jibs in March, and the national unemployment rate held steady at 3.5%.
BLS noted in releasing the employment update Friday morning that the pace of job creation has held steady at roughly the pace for March since early 2022.
The BLS data showed that hiring by bars and restaurants ebbed slightly from the preliminary figure for February, when about 60,000 jobs were added. But the rate still handily outpaced hiring in every other measured sector.
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