U.S. payrolls grew by +266k, which would be fabulous in normal times, but is utterly disappointing at a moment in which forecasters expected +1 million jobs, and we’re still missing millions of pre-pandemic jobs.

This is a big miss that changes how we think about the recovery.

Unemployment is stuck at 6.1%, well above the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5%, and that’s despite the fact that millions are still not looking for work.

The other sorta disappointing part of this report comes from revisions to the prior two months, which we had thought looked kinda great. February job growth was revised up by 68,000, but March was revised down by 146,000, so recent history is -78k worse than we had thought.