US employment rose last month at the fastest pace in nearly four years, easily outstripping expectations.
The latest report on the US labour market offered comfort to President George W. Bush as the jobs market - a hot political issue in the presidential campaign - finally made a decisive turn upward.
Non-farm payrolls climbed 308,000 in March, the biggest gain since April 2000 and well above the 103,000 rise expected on Wall Street.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.7 per cent from the two-year low of 5.6 per cent seen in January and February.
Upward revisions to January and February payrolls helped contribute to the positive tone of the report, which could fuel expectations that the Federal Reserve may be closer to raising overnight interest rates from their current 1958 low of 1 per cent than had been thought.
The March rise in payrolls reflected the resolution of a labour dispute at grocery stores in southern California that had idled 72,000 workers. The department said the return of those workers helped fuel a 47,000 increase in retail employment last month, but it did not quantify the impact.
Economists had said the return of those workers would boost payrolls, but that the impact was hard to gauge because it was unclear how many temporary replacement workers were being let go.
The report showed job gains were widespread across industries.
While a long-hoped for rise in manufacturing employment did not appear, the department said factory payrolls were unchanged in March, finally breaking a string of 43 consecutive monthly declines.