The U.S. Labor Department has released its payrolls data and unemployment rate for the month of February. While the markets have been all in favor of growth and good data, this report is high enough that it will spook the investors who are worried about the timing and severity of the coming round of rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.
Unemployment hit 5.5% for the month, versus consensus estimates of 5.6% from Dow Jones and Bloomberg. Nonfarm payrolls grew by a much better than expected rate at 295,000. Dow Jones had estimates of 240,000 on nonfarm payrolls and Bloomberg had its consensus of 230,000.
Private sector payrolls grew by a rate of 288,000, and that blew out the 225,000 expected by Bloomberg. On the labor force participation rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said:
The civilian labor force participation rate, at 62.8 percent, changed little in February and has remained within a narrow range of 62.7 to 62.9 percent since April 2014. The employment-population ratio was unchanged at 59.3 percent in February but is up by 0.5 percentage point over the year.
Job gains by sector were seen in food services and drinking places, professional and business services, construction, health care, and transportation and warehousing. Employment in mining was down over the month, but note that mining includes oil and gas workers.
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The unemployment rate for teenagers decreased by 1.7 points to 17.1% in February. The jobless rate for adult men was 5.2% and for adult women was 4.9%. By race, whites were at 4.7%, blacks at 10.4%, Asians at 4.0% and Hispanics at 6.6%.
The number of long-term unemployed, which are jobless for 27 weeks or longer, was little changed at 2.7 million. These long-term unemployed individuals accounted for 31.1% of the unemployed. Over the past 12 months, the number of long-term unemployed is down by 1.1 million.
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