Today’s jobs report brings good news and bad. The good: employers added 175,000 jobs in February, a figure well above the anemic job gains recorded in the previous two months. The bad: The gains were down from the average of 189,000 added over the past year and, in the words of the New York Times, “fell a bit short of what policy makers had been hoping to see at this stage of the recovery.”
The nation’s unemployment rate, meanwhile, ticked up a tenth of a point to 6.7 percent as would-be-workers flooded back into the labor market looking for work. Here’s Bloomberg with the half-full reading:
The report indicates employers remain upbeat about the economy’s prospects after winter storms and freezing temperatures across the eastern U.S. slowed consumer spending, housing and manufacturing. … The figures showed hiring at professional and business services increased by the most in a year, while payrolls also rebounded in education and health services. State and local government agencies, factories and construction firms also added to headcounts last month. Revisions to prior reports added a total of 25,000 jobs to overall payrolls in the previous two months.
A pre-report survey of economists conducted by Bloomberg predicted gains of between 100,000 to 220,000.
