US payrolls drop 701,000 in March, the first jobs decline since 2010
Nonfarm payrolls dropped by 701,000 in March, according to Labor Department numbers released Friday that begin to show the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus crisis.
It was the first decline in payrolls since September 2010.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% as employers just began to cut payrolls ahead of social distancing practices that shut down large swaths of the U.S. economy in order to stop the virus’s spread.
