Friday, March 7, 2014

Why the February Jobs Report is Good News

The U.S. jobs report provided much needed sunny news for a country besieged by wintry weather.

Despite the unemployment rate ticking up a tenth of a percent to 6.7% the overall U.S. economy added 175,000 jobs last month, beating analysts forecasts.

The unemployment rate went up slightly as a result of more people looking for work, bucking a trend of workers dropping out of the labor market.

But the best part of the labor report are the types of jobs that were created last month. While most of the jobs added since the end of the recession have been minimum wage, part time positions, at least 57% of the jobs added last month were in sectors that provide full time work and a living wage. These include professional and business services (+79,000), construction (+15,000), and manufacturing (+6,000).

This is the 41st consecutive month that the U.S. economy has added and not lost jobs. Overall about 8 million of the 8.7 million jobs that were lost during the recession have now been recovered. 

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