The March employment report shows the best results in three years: 162,000 jobs added to the economy. It was close to what analysts expected. True, the results were probably bolstered by the February snows, which bumped hiring into March, and census hiring. But it sure beats the months of 2009, when losses of half a million jobs per month were common.
Even so, it's barely a beginning of replacing all the jobs wiped out by the Great Recession. The economy has lost 8 million jobs since the downturn began. In March it reinstalled 2 percent of them. Nonetheless, if we get many months of this, pressure will grow on the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates.