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On March 25, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced that the first phase of the invasion of Ukraine was over. A mere month earlier, President Vladimir Putin had vowed to completely destroy Ukraines military capabilities and to replace the Ukrainian government, which he claimed without any evidence was a neo-Nazi junta planning to commit genocide in Donbas.

To that end, on February 24 the Russian army and airborne forces attempted a lightning assault on Kyiv, and simultaneously launched offensives against Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kherson, Melitopol, Mariupol and on the line of contact in the Donbas region. The subsequent month of unexpectedly vicious high-intensity combat has seen Russian forces fail to take all the cities, with the exception of the smaller southern cities of Kherson and Melitopol, which fell in the first days. In return, the Russian army has taken extremely heavy losses; between 7,000 and 15,000 personnel killed and more than 2,000 vehicles visually confirmed as destroyed or captured.

The new announcement by the Russian government is a direct response to these failures. It is an admission that, at least for now, Russia cannot return Ukraine to its control by force. Instead of regime change (denazification according to Russia), the new claim is that Russias goal is a more limited focus on taking territory and destroying Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.

This is a serious crisis for President Putins regime. To justify the special military operation against Ukraine, he has used extreme rhetoric and baseless claims of neo-Nazism and genocide in Ukraine for months. Since the invasion began, ordinary Russians have been presented with a barrage of Z-themed pro-war propaganda, patriotic speeches and rallies designed to stir patriotic fervour.

During the first few days, when Russian leaders still assumed they would quickly defeat Ukraine, Russian state media carried pronouncements that President Putins invasion had reshaped the world order and put an end to both the Ukraine question and a unipolar United States-led, NATO dominated world. Perhaps even more importantly, Russias military power and history both conventional and nuclear are a cornerstone of national identity and national pride, and Russians have long looked down culturally and politically on Ukraine and Ukrainians. All of this makes the current situation extremely difficult for the Russian government to explain to its people.

In the information climate carefully created by the Russian government for its people, how could the mighty Russian military have failed to destroy the much weaker Ukrainian army? How can a supposedly high-tech special military operation that would be conducted in a short time by elite forces have led to tens of thousands of dead, wounded and captured Russian troops and more than 2,000 destroyed Russian vehicles? How is it that the Ukrainian people supposedly being oppressed by an unpopular neo-Nazi junta imposed by shadowy hostile Western forces are now fighting with fierce anger and almost total national unity against their Russian liberators? Most of all, how can the Russian government supposedly a nuclear superpower, and the self-proclaimed heir of the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 make a ceasefire deal that leaves the supposedly genocidal, neo-Nazi Ukrainian government in power? By creating a narrative justification for the invasion that was completely divorced from reality, the Russian government has created a situation where almost any possible outcome to the war now will be extremely hard to justify to its own people.

Russia needs a ceasefire soon, however, because the current rate of equipment and personnel losses is not sustainable, and in any case, they are making little meaningful progress except in the east. In fact, in the past week, Ukraine has retaken significant territory around Mykolaiv and Kherson in the southwest, around Irpin and Makariv to the west of Kyiv and Trostyanets to the east of Kyiv. With each passing day, the Ukrainian hand in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations becomes stronger rather than weaker.

In this context, the Russian announcement of a new phase of the war that will focus on the Donbas has two purposes. Firstly, it represents a pragmatic military strategy. The Donbas is the part of Ukraine where Russian forces stand the best chance of achieving major military successes they are attempting to concentrate sufficient forces to break the Ukrainian defence line along the Donets River and have gained important ground around Izyum in the past week. It makes sense to prioritise overstretched forces where they have the best chance of achieving tangible results, which will improve their bargaining position in ceasefire talks. Secondly, this is the start of an effort to moderate the expectations created by the completely unrealistic view of the war that the Russian government has fed its people.

Despite this, some in the Russian government seem to find it hard to accept these reduced ambitions and the reality that they imply. On March 27, the propagandist known as Putins mouthpiece, Dmitry Kiselyov, stated on Russian television that Russia will never cede Ukraine to anyone it has to be part of Russia, even against Ukraines own will. Furthermore, Russia continues to conduct missile strikes throughout Ukraine including in Lviv in the west, and is finding it difficult to disengage its forces around Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Kherson due to strong Ukrainian counterattacks. Therefore, while a new phase of the invasion has been announced, it remains to be seen if Russia can successfully focus on the Donbas as stated.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.

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Russia has effectively admitted defeat In Ukraine - Al Jazeera English

KYIV, Ukraine Ukrainians on Monday reported that they had pushed back invading Russian forces in fierce fighting around Kyiv and in northeastern Ukraine, while the Russians moved to encircle and cut off Ukrainian forces in the east, making a diplomatic resolution to the war seem as far away as ever.

Ukrainian counterattacks around Kyiv reportedly retook more ground, with the mayor of Irpin, a fiercely contested suburb on the northwestern edge of the capital, saying that most Russian troops had retreated, though fighting continued in some districts. If Ukrainian soldiers can maintain control of Irpin, it would be strategically important to keeping their hold on Kyiv.

Our Irpin is liberated from Moscows evil, Mayor Oleksandr Markushin of Irpin posted on Telegram on Monday. But the deputy police chief, Oleksandr Bogai, offered a more skeptical account in a telephone interview, noting that fighting continued even as most Russian troops appeared to have pulled back, and that the Russians continued to shell the town.

Diplomacy between the warring countries continued, with Russian and Ukrainian delegations arriving in Istanbul for another round of talks set to begin on Tuesday.

While Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has said that he is open to discussing the future neutrality of Ukraine, if he can get security guarantees for his country and only after a national referendum, he has refused to concede territory to Russia or to the self-declared republics in the southeastern region known as the Donbas, as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has demanded.

In Washington, President Biden on Monday stood by comments he made Saturday about Mr. Putin, for Gods sake, this man cannot remain in power. Speaking to reporters, Mr. Biden said the remark, apparently ad-libbed in a speech he delivered in Warsaw, was an expression of his personal outrage, not a statement of a U.S. policy that the Russian leader should be toppled.

On the battlefield, in addition to gains around Kyiv, the Ukrainians also reported important progress in the Sumy region, northwest of Kharkiv, near the border with Russia. Dmytro Zhyvytsky, head of regional military administration, said that the Ukrainians had recaptured the towns of Trostyanets and Boromlya. A Pentagon official confirmed the recapture of Trostyanets.

The Russian army is trying to cut off the major Ukrainian forces to the east of the River Dnipro, where the bulk of the army has been fighting Russian troops and Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas, which Moscow has recognized as the independent Donetsk and Luhansk republics. The Russian aim is to keep the Ukrainian troops from coming to the aid of Kyiv, and Russian military officials said over the weekend that their war effort was now concentrated in the east of the country.

Despite those comments, Russian forces continued to battle for control of key towns east and northwest of Kyiv.

Russian forces have seized a southern corridor between Crimea, which they captured from Ukraine in 2014, and the Donbas, interrupted only by the besieged port city of Mariupol, which they have devastated with artillery, rockets and airstrikes, and appear determined to capture.

Russian forces appear to be concentrating their effort to attempt the encirclement of Ukrainian forces directly facing the separatist regions in the east of the country, advancing from the direction of Kharkiv in the north and Mariupol in the south, the British Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

A spokesman for Mariupols mayor, Vadym Boichenko, said on Monday that almost 5,000 people, including about 210 children, have been killed there. Those figures could not be confirmed. The mayors office also said that 90 percent of the buildings had been damaged and 40 percent destroyed, and that some 170,000 people still remain in the city again, figures that cannot be confirmed.

The situation in the city remains difficult, Mr. Boichenko, who is no longer in the city, said on national television on Monday. People are beyond the line of humanitarian catastrophe. We need to completely evacuate Mariupol.

In weeks of talks between Ukrainian and Russian representatives, there have been no clear diplomatic steps toward bringing the war to an end. Mr. Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Monday that while the decision to keep talking in person was important, We cannot yet talk about progress and we will not.

In an interview on Sunday with independent Russian media an interview censored in Russia itself Mr. Zelensky restated his willingness to accede to at least some Russian demands.

Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state we are ready to go for it, he said.

But it is not clear what neutrality would mean. Mr. Putin insists that Ukraine must never join NATO, a demand Mr. Zelensky appears to have accepted, but also that it demilitarize, a term that has not been defined. And it remains unclear if Mr. Putin would accept Ukraine joining the European Union, too.

After all, Mr. Putin has responded with force in the past to Ukraines drawing closer to Europe. He pressured the last Kremlin-aligned Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to renege on a promised trade deal with the European Union. After that sparked protests that forced out Mr. Yanukovych in 2014, Mr. Putin invaded Crimea and spurred the separatist war in Donbas.

On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky again called for direct negotiations with Mr. Putin, but the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, repeated on Monday that such talks would have to wait for more progress in the peace talks and presumably more progress in Russias war.

Reports emerged Monday that Ukrainian peace negotiators and a Russian billionaire attempting to act as a mediator might have been poisoned early this month, though the circumstances were very murky and those affected all recovered.

The first reports, by The Wall Street Journal and the investigative group Bellingcat, indicated that at least two Ukrainian peace negotiators and the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who has attempted to act as a go-between, developed unusual symptoms at the same time in early March after meeting in Kyiv red eyes, constant and painful tearing, and peeling skin on their faces and hands.

The description of the symptoms was confirmed to The Times by someone close to Mr. Abramovich.

Asked about the reports, members of the Ukrainian negotiating team did not address them directly. There is a lot of speculation, various conspiracy theories, said one, Mykhailo Podolyak. Another, Rustem Umerov, referred to unverified information.

Reuters reported that an unnamed U.S. official with knowledge of the matter said that the sickness may have been caused by an environmental factor.

Within Russia, censorship of the Zelensky interview was just another indication of the repression of information the government has essentially made it a criminal offense to criticize the war or even call it a war. On Monday, Novaya Gazeta, the Russian newspaper that helped define fearless journalism in the post-Soviet era and whose editor, Dmitri A. Muratov, shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year, suspended publication in print and online at least until the end of war, leaving Russia without a major media outlet critical of the Kremlin.

President Biden has not withheld his own contempt for Mr. Putin and this war. Mr. Peskov on Monday said that Mr. Bidens comments in Warsaw about Mr. Putin not remaining in power are concerning, of course. He added that we will continue following the U.S. presidents statements very carefully, we are scrupulously documenting them and we will keep doing this.

Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, who is seeking re-election next month, warned on Sunday against escalation of words or actions, in an implicit critique of Mr. Biden. Mr. Macron, who has had several conversations with Mr. Putin, said he hoped to achieve first a cease-fire and then the total withdrawal of troops by diplomatic means. He added, If we want to do that, we cant escalate either in words or actions.

Mr. Zelensky has consistently demanded more action from NATO and Western countries to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, to supply combat aircraft, to accelerate the flow of advanced weaponry, including armed drones, ground-to-air missiles and anti-tank weaponry, not to mention many thousands of rounds of ammunition. Washington and its allies have ruled out a no-fly zone; they have not refused to provide aircraft, but so far they have not delivered any.

In an interview with the Economist in Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky said he was committed to victory and asked for more aid.

We believe in victory, he said. Its impossible to believe in anything else. But to achieve it, he said, Ukraine needs tanks, armored personnel vehicles and military aircraft, and it needs them now.

The West can just promise to help in coming weeks, he said. It doesnt allow us to unblock Russia-occupied cities, to bring food to residents there, to take the military initiative into our own hands. And Russia keeps pushing ahead, he said. The Russians have thousands of military vehicles, and they are coming and coming and coming.

Andrew E. Kramer reported from Kyiv and Steven Erlanger from Brussels. Reporting was contributed by Carlotta Gall and Maria Varenikova from Kyiv, Valerie Hopkins from Lviv, Ukraine, Anton Troianovski and Ivan Nechepurenko from Istanbul, Michael D. Shear from Washington, and Tariq Panja, Kaly Soto and Cora Engelbrecht from London.

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Heres What Happened on Day 33 of the War in Ukraine - The New York Times

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is leading to a dramatic decline in crops planted by farmers in the country this spring, with fears for domestic and international food security.

Known for its fertile soils, Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat, barley, sunflower and maize, in particular to north Africa.

However, farmers and analysts have told the Guardian that planting, harvest and export have all been disrupted by a lack of fertiliser, low or no fuel supplies for tractors, closure of ports and military activity.

At least one-third of the land normally used for spring crops such as maize and sunflower is likely to go unplanted. Furthermore, one-third of the normal wheat harvest from the crop planted last autumn could be lost.

A small amount of wheat held in storage is reportedly being exported by rail and road via Poland and Romania, but this is a tiny fraction of what is normally exported via the Black Sea ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv before the invasion, said analysts.

Ukrainian officials have said other export routes via the Danube River, railways and road are restricted by inadequate facilities and, in the case of railway, the difference in track and stock width between Europe and Ukraine.

I think were looking at potentially several months [after a cessation of the war] before export levels could be returned to normal, said Mike Lee, who runs the Black Sea Crop Forecasts service. He said ships may struggle to get insurance cover and permission to re-enter Black Sea ports, with mines also needing to be cleared.

Global cereal prices rose to a new all-time high in February due to the disruption to exports. The World Food Programme, the UN agency that provides emergency supplies to countries in conflict or experiencing natural disasters such as famines, said this week that the higher cost of food has meant it is already cutting rations.

While most of Ukraines wheat is planted in autumn, other crops, including maize and sunflower, are planted in spring, over the coming weeks.

Serhiy Ivaschuk operates a mixed dairy and arable farm with just under 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) in the west of Ukraine in the Khmelnytskyi region, 350kms south-west of Kyiv. He said there were no hostilities in his area, but planting had been slowed this year as he had lost workers and farm vehicles to the Ukrainian military.

Our own agricultural inputs are more or less sufficient for now and the diesel stocks should be enough for the sowing. We may run short of seeds, fertilisers and crop protection products.

Before the war started, we had made several pre-payments for supplies from our credit lines. However, the logistics and supply chains are broken now, so our suppliers cant provide us with the inputs, he said.

Ivaschuk said he had corn and wheat in storage ready to sell but was unable to export it due to logistical restrictions on using the railway, with his crops normally sent through the Polish border by rail.

The restrictions on selling wheat held in storage are not just a threat to global food security, said Andrii Dykun, chair of the Ukrainian Agri Council, which represents about 1,000 farmers across the country.

In a few months there will be a new harvest, so where will we store it? Farmers also need money for fuel and fertiliser, he said, adding that the price of diesel had doubled since the war started.

Ukraine gets most of its diesel supplies from Belarus and Russia, said Dykun, but was now trying to find other sources from Europe.

The Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UCAB), one of the countrys largest agricultural associations, said farmers facing shortages of fertiliser, seeds and plant protection products were likely to have lower yields.

It estimates around a third of the acreage normally used for spring crops may remain unsown this year. The wheat crop planted last autumn had favourable weather over winter, but about 40% of it is in regions with active hostilities.

Svetlana Lytvyn, a UCAB analyst, said: If we make a pessimistic assumption that it is not possible to collect these crops then Ukrainian farmers will receive 19m tonnes of grain instead of 32m tonnes [based on average recent yields] when they start harvesting in July.

In western Ukraine, another farmer who co-manages a 2,000-hectare (4,940-acre) farm near the city of Lviv, said he had started planting peas and some wheat but that they currently intended to sow around two-thirds of what we planned a month ago.

Cashflow and inputs are very difficult currently, with suppliers demanding prepayment for supply compared to credit last season, he said, adding that farms in the east were likely to be sowing even less due to more difficulties with logistics, military occupation and mined areas.

In the north and east of Ukraine, many farmers had tanks, military machinery and even missiles on their land. Some have described Russian soldiers occupying their farms and taking away food and equipment.

They are scared to go into the fields, said Dykun, adding that it looks like they [the Russian military] want to destroy our agricultural industry.

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Global food price fears as Ukraine farmers forced to reduce crop planting - The Guardian

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) Russian troops handed control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant back to the Ukrainians and left the heavily contaminated site early Friday, more than a month after taking it over, Ukrainian authorities said, as fighting raged on the outskirts of Kyiv and other fronts.

Ukraines state power company, Energoatom, said the pullout at Chernobyl came after soldiers received significant doses of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the closed plant. But there was no independent confirmation of that.

The withdrawal took place amid growing indications the Kremlin is using talk of de-escalation in Ukraine as cover while regrouping, resupplying its forces and redeploying them for a stepped-up offensive in the eastern part of the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian withdrawals from the north and center of the country were just a military tactic and that the forces are building up for new powerful attacks in the southeast.

We know their intentions, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation. We know that they are moving away from those areas where we hit them in order to focus on other, very important ones where it may be difficult for us.

There will be battles ahead, he added.

Meanwhile, a convoy of 45 buses headed to Mariupol in another bid to evacuate people from the besieged port city after the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area. But Russian forces blocked the buses, and only 631 people were able to get out of the city in private cars, according to the Ukrainian government.

Twelve Ukrainian buses were able to deliver 14 tons of food and medical supplies to Mariupol, but the aid was seized by Russian troops, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said late Thursday.

The city has been the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war. Tens of thousands have managed to get out of Mariupol in the past few weeks by way of humanitarian corridors, reducing its population from a prewar 430,000 to an estimated 100,000 as of last week, but other relief efforts have been thwarted by continued Russian attacks.

A new round of talks was scheduled for Friday, five weeks into the war that has left thousands dead and driven 4 million Ukrainians from the country.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it had been informed by Ukraine that the Russian forces at the site of the worlds worst nuclear disaster had transferred control of it in writing to the Ukrainians.

The last Russian troops left the Chernobyl plant early Friday, the Ukrainian government agency responsible for the exclusion zone said.

Energoatom gave no details on the condition of the soldiers it said were exposed to radiation and did not say how many were affected. There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin, and the IAEA said it had not been able to confirm the reports of Russian troops receiving high doses. It said it was seeking more information.

Russian forces seized the Chernobyl site in the opening stages of the Feb. 24 invasion, raising fears that they would cause damage or disruption that could spread radiation. The workforce at the site oversees the safe storage of spent fuel rods and the concrete-entombed ruins of the reactor that exploded in 1986.

Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert with the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said it seems unlikely a large number of troops would develop severe radiation illness, but it was impossible to know for sure without more details.

He said contaminated material was probably buried or covered with new topsoil during the cleanup of Chernobyl, and some soldiers may have been exposed to a hot spot of radiation while digging. Others may have assumed they were at risk too, he said.

Early this week, the Russians said they would significantly scale back military operations in areas around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to increase trust between the two sides and help negotiations along.

But in the Kyiv suburbs, regional governor Oleksandr Palviuk said on social media Thursday that Russian forces shelled Irpin and Makariv and that there were battles around Hostomel. Pavliuk said there were Ukrainian counterattacks and some Russian withdrawals around the suburb of Brovary to the east.

Chernihiv came under attack as well. At least one person was killed and four were wounded in the Russian shelling of a humanitarian convoy of buses sent to Chernihiv to evacuate residents cut off from food, water and other supplies, said Ukrainian Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova

Ukraine also reported Russian artillery barrages in and around the northeastern city of Kharkiv.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said intelligence indicates Russia is not scaling back its military operations in Ukraine but is instead trying to regroup, resupply its forces and reinforce its offensive in the Donbas.

Russia has repeatedly lied about its intentions, Stoltenberg said. At the same time, he said, pressure is being kept up on Kyiv and other cities, and we can expect additional offensive actions bringing even more suffering.

The Donbas is the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014. In the past few days, the Kremlin, in a seeming shift in its war aims, said that its main goal now is gaining control of the Donbas, which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including Mariupol.

The top rebel leader in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, issued an order to set up a rival city government for Mariupol, according to Russian state news agencies, in a sign of Russian intent to hold and administer the city.

With talks set to resume between Ukraine and Russia via video, there seemed little faith that the two sides would resolve the conflict any time soon.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that conditions werent yet ripe for a cease-fire and that he wasnt ready for a meeting with Zelenskyy until negotiators do more work, Italian Premier Mario Draghi said after a telephone conversation with the Russian leader.

In other developments, Ukraines emergency services said the death toll had risen to 20 in a Russian missile strike Tuesday on a government administration building in the southern city of Mykolaiv.

As Western officials search for clues about what Russias next move might be, a top British intelligence official said demoralized Russian soldiers in Ukraine are refusing to carry out orders and sabotaging their equipment and had accidentally shot down their own aircraft.

In a speech in Australia, Jeremy Fleming, head of the GCHQ electronic spy agency, said Putin had apparently massively misjudged the invasion.

The Pentagon reported Thursday that an initial half-dozen shipments of weapons and other security assistance from the U.S. have reached Ukraine as part of an $800 million aid package President Joe Biden approved this month.

The shipments included Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, body armor, medical supplies and other materials, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said.

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the war is going because they are afraid to tell him the truth.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the U.S. is wrong and that neither the State Department nor the Pentagon possesses the real information about what is happening in the Kremlin.

___

Karmanau reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

___

Follow the APs coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Russians leave Chernobyl site as fighting rages elsewhere - The Associated Press

Signs with the message 'Now Hiring' are displayed in front of restaurants in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on March 19. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Signs with the message 'Now Hiring' are displayed in front of restaurants in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on March 19.

U.S. employers added jobs at a healthy clip in March, despite the economic shock following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 431,000 jobs last month, as the unemployment rate fell to 3.6% from 3.8% in February. Employment gains for January and February were also revised upwards by a total of 95,000 jobs.

The job growth in March was widespread with bars and restaurants adding 61,000 jobs, retailers adding 49,000 and manufacturers adding 38,000 jobs.

The job market remains unusually tight, which is putting upward pressure on both wages and prices and fueling inflation worries at the Federal Reserve.

"This is a labor market that is out of balance," Fed chairman Jerome Powell said last week. "It's great for workers. But we need the labor market to be sustainably tight."

Powell and his colleagues worry that if high inflation goes unchecked, it will ultimately derail the jobs recovery. Prices in February were up 6.4% from a year ago, according to the Fed's preferred inflation measure the sharpest increase since 1982.

The central bank began raising interest rates in March in an effort to cool off demand and rein in prices. Powell has said more aggressive rate hikes could be in store in the coming months.

A separate report from the Labor Department this week showed vacant jobs outnumbered unemployed workers by nearly two to one. Employers have been forced to offer substantial pay raises in an effort to attract scarce workers.

"We don't expect to see wage pressures fall any time soon," said Julia Pollak, chief economist for the job search website ZipRecruiter." "On the contrary, what we are seeing is wage growth pressures broaden."

Wages have risen by an average of 5.6% over the last twelve months.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a luncheon at the 2022 NABE Economic Policy Conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., on March 21 Samuel Corum/Getty Images hide caption

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a luncheon at the 2022 NABE Economic Policy Conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., on March 21

There are encouraging signs that more people may be joining the workforce as the health outlook improves.

Friday's report showed the number of people working or looking for work grew by 418,000 in March, though the labor force is still somewhat smaller than it was before the pandemic.

In February, nearly 8 million people were not working because they were sick with COVID-19 or caring for someone who was sick. By March, that number had fallen to less than 3 million, according to the Census Bureau.

Pollak also points to a ZipRecruiter survey which found more people expect to enter the job market this year.

"The Great Return is the new labor market story," Pollak said. "People have had enough of sitting around doing nothing. Also, with COVID relief payments fading away, people are starting to feel a little bit more financial pressure to come back to work."

There is also significant churn in the job market, with millions of workers quitting each month in many cases to switch to a better job. Layoffs, on the other hand, are rare, as employers are eager to hang on to the workers they already have.

"People have confidence that they can leave their old job and find new ones," said economist Nick Bunker of the Indeed Hiring Lab. "Those who stay are seeing a level of security that we haven't seen in a long time."

The challenge of finding workers may push some employers to invest in more labor-saving technology, which would allow the existing workforce to be more productive.

"I do think that will happen in the service industries," Powell told a gathering of business economists last week. "So you may well have productivity there, which would be great. That would make these high wage increases that we're seeing more sustainable."

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Employers continue hiring spree despite the war in Ukraine - NPR