Economy adds 235K jobs in February

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing in February that he believes the unemployment rate “is not real”.

Employers in the U.S. have added more than two million jobs in the past 12 months, and the latest figures show that labour market strength continued into February. Hourly wages, on average, for all private-sector workers rose six cents last month, nothing exciting but still a little quicker than the prior month and up 2.8% from February of previous year, a pace that is well above inflation. It found that employers added 298,000 positions in February, an enormous increase over the analysts’ consensus number of 189,000.

There is “more voluntary part-time employment because people can now work part-time and get health insurance”, Gould said, “and then you also see more people self-employed for the same reasons; they have some of the economic risk moved off them”. All of them continued recent trends of increasing employment. And the labor force participation rate – which fell dramatically after 2007 and never really recovered – has seen slight gains over the past few months.

Among the marginally attached, there were 522,000 discouraged workers in February, little changed from a year earlier. The U.S. coal industry has lost more than 30,000 jobs since 2009.

That same report said Beaver County had a labor force of 86,200 people in December, with 5,400 unemployed.

Employers added 235,000 jobs in February as mild weather and increased business confidence spurred strong hiring for a second straight month. Over the year, employment in the industry has grown by 105,000.

The February jobs report did contain less positive figures. Employment rose in food manufacturing (+9,000) and machinery (+7,000) but fell in transportation equipment (-6,000).

Many cast doubt on Trump’s promise to bring coal mining and manufacturing jobs back to the United States, arguing that companies will simply opt for cheaper labor or looser environmental regulations overseas.

Job growth has averaged more than 186,000 per month since January 2010, a recovery that predates Donald Trump’s presidency. “But it is more than good enough and it guarantees a rate hike next week, barring an asteroid strike on Washington”. Jobless claims have hovered near 40-year lows. Pennsylvania’s rate for February will be released later this month. Hourly wages for the typical worker rose 3.1 percent in 2016, according to a report this week by the Economic Policy Institute. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls has been 33.6 hours since August 2016. And there were fresh indications that worker earnings are increasing at a slightly faster clip than a year ago. “Moreover, the construction job gains of 58,000 is the best monthly showing in over a decade and implies less bottle-necking to home building in upcoming months”.