Saturday, March 7, 2015

The Big Takeaways From the February Jobs Report

Friday's jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the economy added 295,000 in February, with the unemployment rate declining to 5.5 percent. That is down from January's unemployment rate of 5.7 percent.

The gains beat the average job growth of 266,000 for the past 12 months. While this exceeds expectations, as reported by Bloomberg, of an added 235,000 jobs, there are still some important caveats.

The jobs report found that the number of discouraged workers—that is, workers who are not looking for work because they feel there are no jobs available—remained virtually unchanged at 732,000 in the past year.

Meanwhile, the civilian labor force participation rate was basically unchanged from 62.9 percent in January to 62.8 percent in February, meaning there are still many people who could be employed but are currently out of the job market.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/economy/the-big-takeaways-from-the-february-jobs-report-20150306

No comments: