Nonfarm payrolls jumped to 379k jobs in February following an upwardly revised 166K rise in January and compared to analysts' expectations of 182K . This has resulted in the unemployment rate dropping back to 6.2% while wage growth has held at 5.3%.
Most of the job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, with smaller gains in temporary help services, health care and social assistance, retail trade, and manufacturing. Employment declined in state and local government education, construction, and mining. Looking closely at today's figures, one can see that employees' food service and drinking places, i.e. waiters and bartenders, accounted for a massive 286K jobs, or 75% of the total job gains in February amid easing business restrictions. It is a sharp rebound after December's collapse in restaurant workers when nearly 400K people lost their jobs amid the latest round of restaurant shutdowns.
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Most of the hiring came in the hospitality sector, which saw 355,000 new jobs. Source: Bloomberg
The US unemployment rate fell slightly to 6.2 % in February, the lowest rate since April's record high of 14.8 % and below market expectations of 6.3 %. Only black unemployment did rise modest to 9.9% from 9.2% a month ago. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for Asians fell to 5.1% in February. The rates for adult men (6.0 %), adult women (5.9 %), teenagers (13.9 %), Whites (5.6 %), Blacks (9.9 %), and Hispanics (8.5 %) showed little or no change.
Unemployment rate fell slightly in February but still remains well above its pre-pandemic levels of 3.5 %. Source: Bloomberg via ZeroHedge
Despite February’s overall employment gain, the US economy is still about 9.5 million jobs short of the peak in February of 2020, as the labour market still has a long way to go before fully recovering from the pandemic shock. However some analysts believe that easing business restrictions, falling coronavirus infection rates, a fast vaccine rollout and continued support from the government should lead to an increase in employment especially in the service industries within the next few months.
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