U.S. employers posted 6.87 million job openings in March, a number nearly identical to February’s 6.92 million, but beneath the surface the Labor Department’s latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, revealed a labor market that was gathering strength heading into the economic headwinds unleashed by the Iran war.
Gross hiring climbed to 5.55 million, the highest level since February 2024, after a disappointing 2025 in which employers added fewer than 10,000 jobs a month—the weakest stretch of hiring outside a recession in more than two decades. The March gain followed a rollercoaster start to the year: payrolls jumped by 160,000 in January, plunged by 133,000 in February, then rebounded by 178,000 in March.
“This is a steady labor market,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. But he cautioned that “this picture of the labor market will change as the economy adjusts to $100+ a barrel oil, higher inflation, possibly tighter monetary conditions and global recession starting in Asia”—regions that depend on disrupted oil and gas shipments from the Persian Gulf.
The JOLTS report showed that layoffs ticked up in March. At the same time, more workers voluntarily left their jobs, a quit-rate increase that economists often interpret as a sign of confidence in the ability to find new employment.
The war that started on Feb. 28 has already clouded the outlook. The April jobs report, to be released Friday, is expected to show a net gain of 57,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.3%, according to a FactSet consensus. But those projections were compiled before the full effect of triple-digit oil prices, renewed inflation concerns, and a potential tightening of credit conditions had been absorbed.
A separate factor is quietly reshaping the arithmetic of the job market. Stricter immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump has reduced the number of people competing for work, meaning the economy needs far fewer new jobs to keep the unemployment rate stable. Last year, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis economists pegged the break-even rate at roughly 153,000 jobs a month. In an update published in March, St. Louis Fed economist Alexander Bick calculated that the figure could now be as low as 15,000.
Job openings have declined steadily from a record 12.3 million in March 2022, as the economy cooled from its post-pandemic reopening surge. Elevated interest rates, uncertainty over Trump administration trade and regulatory policies, and the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence have all weighed on employer demand. The March data suggest that some of those drags were easing, but the war has since introduced a new and far less predictable variable.