The US Economy Added 20K Jobs Last Month

The February jobs report is out, and it’s a shocker. The US economy added just 20,000 jobs last month. Wall Street had been expecting an increase of 180,000. February was one of the slowest months for jobs in years.

The previous months were revised higher. The unemployment rate fell to 3.8%.

Economists did not immediately panic as hiring has been strong in recent months and they do not see one weak number as a signal of an imminent recession. But the disappointing February figure comes as growth is slowing. The tax cuts and stimulus of additional government spending seem to be wearing off, economic growth abroad has weakened, and the partial government shutdown and ongoing trade tensions appear to be weighing on consumer and business spending.

Hiring was slow in every industry except health care and white-collar businesses. Construction lost 31,000 jobs and leisure and hospitality, which is normally a driver of growth, was unchanged.

Economists have been predicting hiring would slow down for awhile now. Job openings exceed the number of unemployed, meaning there aren’t many Americans left to hire and many companies complain they can’t find the talent they want.

Wages grew 3.4 percent in the past year, the best annual gain since April 2009, when the United States was in the Great Recession. Wages are now growing well above the cost of living. Inflation has been just 1.6 percent in the past year, according to the Commerce Department.

The current labor market is widely viewed as the best since the start of the 2000s, most economists and business leaders say. There is so much demand for highly-skilled workers with specialized data and computer skills that employers are sometimes hiring and poaching workers when they don’t have an actually job opening for them.

Posted by on March 8th, 2019 at 8:52 am


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