Nonfarm employment grew by 275,000 jobs in February, according to the latest BLS jobs report, slightly above the current 12-month average monthly gain of 230,000.
Temporary help services continued its downward trend in February with the loss of 15,000 jobs. Meanwhile, employment continued to increase last month in health care (+67,000), leisure and hospitality (+58,000), government (+52,000), and construction (+23,000).
Job counts for the previous two months were also revised in the latest report, with December’s total dropping to +290,000 jobs and January’s falling to +229,000. This represents a total reduction of 167,000 jobs across both months.
After steady trends, the unemployment rate rose from 3.7% to 3.9% in February, and the number of unemployed people grew to 6.5 million, a 334,000 increase from January. For comparison, the unemployment rate a year ago was 3.6% and the unemployed count was 6.0 million people.
