The U.S. economy added 431,00 jobs in March and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, the Department of Labor said Friday.

Economists had expected the economy to add 490,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to tick down to 3.7 percent from 3.8 percent. The range of forecasts by economists surveyed by Econoday was between a gain of 200,000 to a gain of 700,000.

The shockingly high figure for February was revised even higher. Now the economy is estimated to have added 750,000 jobs in February, up from the 678,000 initially reported.

The economy rebounded from the pandemic much faster than expected. The labor market, in particular, quickly recovered much of the damage down by 2020’s lockdowns and social distancing, with the unemployment rate dropping much faster than expected. Demand for goods soared as American incomes were pumped up with stimulus money from various government programs and social distancing rules left people bereft of many of the leisure services activities–sports, concerts, travel, movies–that typically would have drained bank accounts.