The payroll gains in March were good. But we’d need eight years of consistent monthly gains just like that — taking us to the year 2019 — to bring the economy back to full employment.

The labor market lost almost 8.8 million jobs from the peak for payrolls in January 2008 (138 million payroll jobs, when the unemployment rate was 5%) to the trough in February 2010 (129.2 million). Since then, the U.S. has added 1.5 million jobs.

If the March gain of 216,000 jobs were to continue, payrolls would return to their peak in 34 months — early 2014.

But the economy also needs to add at least 100,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with long-run growth in the labor force. That brings us to early 2019 under March’s pace for payroll gains.