The participation rate, which shows the share of working-age people in the labor force, jumped to 62.9%, the highest since January 2015.
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“Despite panic on Wall Street about impending recession, Main Street goes about its business as usual”.
The increase exceeded the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 92 economists, which called for a gain of 195,000.
Year-on-year wages were up a modest 2.2 percent, when they had been trending at around 2.5 percent in previous months.
Wage growth has been hovering just above 2% year-over-year on average since the current expansion began in mid-2009.
The unemployment rate held at a low 4.9 percent, the lowest since February 2008 at the beginning of the Great Recession. Average hourly earnings dropped, the first monthly decline in more than a year, and workers put in fewer hours. The dollar slipped against a basket of currencies on concerns about wage growth.
The latest reports mean that the USA economy has now gone through falling financial markets and a global economic go-slow without suffering much blow.
“Overall employment growth remains strong despite the global headwinds”, High Frequency Economics chief United States economist Jim O’Sullivan said before the report. The central bank raised rates in December for the first time since June 2006.
However, traders of futures linked to the Fed’s benchmark policy rate are thinking longer term. And so far it does look like the rate hike wasn’t the disaster critics feared. Wages have increased 2.2 percent since a year ago but remain historically low. Meanwhile the 4-week moving average of new claims for unemployment insurance is slightly lower and the present conditions of the consumer sentiment index is up modestly.
Shane Ferro/Huffington Post There’s a huge racial disparity in the unemployment rate in this country. Wage growth is seen accelerating as the labor market settles into full employment.
In a positive sign, a broader measure of joblessness that includes part-time employees who prefer full-time jobs and discouraged workers who have given up looking, as well as the unemployed, fell to 9.7% from 9.9%.
“Today’s jobs report revealed strong gains for the U.S. workforce, but more importantly, the data shows there’s room for this labor market to grow”, Tara Sinclair, chief economist for employment hub Indeed, said Friday in an email to U.S. News. Friday’s report is expected to show the unemployment rate holding at this level. “There is not a lot of slack left in the job market”. And manufacturing has added just 12,000 jobs over that time. Mining lost a further 18,000 jobs after shedding 9,000 positions in January.
The US economy added 242,000 jobs in February, spurred by growth in restaurants, retail and healthcare.
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Economists expected hiring to increase to about 190,000 last month.
