U.S. hiring surged again last month as the economy continued to reopen, with employers adding 943,000 jobs despite a spike in COVID-19 cases as persistent worker shortages appeared to ease.
The unemployment rate, which is calculated from a separate survey of households, tumbled from 5.9% to 5.4%, the Labor Department said Friday.
The job gain, the largest since August 2020, topped the 900,000 projected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
So far, the U.S. has recovered 16.7 million, or 74%, of the 22.4 million jobs lost last spring, leaving the nation 5.7 million jobs below its pre-pandemic level.
