Last Friday (April 1, 2022), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – March 2022 – which reported a total payroll employment rise of only 431,000 jobs. Fortunately, employment growth was strong enough to drive the unemployment rate down by 0.2 points to 3.6 per cent. But there is still room for the unemployment rate to fall even further. The US labour market is still 1,579 thousand jobs short from where it was at the end of March 2020, which helps to explain why there are no wage pressures emerging. Real wages continued to decline. Any analyst who is claiming the US economy is close to full employment hasn’t looked at the data.