Underwhelming payroll growth in March shows the job market is running out of great workers available for hire, veteran strategist David Kelly told CNBC on Friday. Nonfarm payrolls rose 103,000 in March, a big slip from the prior month.
“There is a message here: We are out of easily employable workers,” the J.P. Morgan Funds chief global strategist told “Squawk on the Street.”
“In the housing market, sometimes realtors say sales were weak because there was no inventory. Well, there is not a lot of inventory of really great workers to hire who are still unemployed. That may be slowing down job growth.”
Nonfarm payrolls data fell well short of the 193,000 expected by economists, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Friday. The monthly reading was a slip from the 326,000 reported in February.
The unemployment rate was 4.1 percent, while economists expected it to decline one-tenth of a point to 4 percent.
Kelly expects payroll numbers to improve in coming months. “The jobs number today is a little bit like snowfall in April. It’s unpleasant but probably not a harbinger of things to come,” he said.
Job growth is still making “good headway,” averaging 200,000 per month this year, Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius told “Squawk on the Street” on Friday.
However, Hatzius expects job creation to really slow down late this year and next.
“Next year if the unemployment rate comes down again, which I think it will, then we’re going to have a harder time adding jobs because we’ll be down at just really low levels, probably beyond full employment with a little more upward pressure on wages and prices,” he said. “And then the fed will want things to slow down somewhat.”
— CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this report.
