US adds 227,000 jobs in Feb.; jobless rate 8.3 pct

CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER

AP Eco­nom­ics Writer

WASHINGTON — The United States added 227,000 jobs in Feb­ru­ary in the lat­est dis­play of the eco­nomic recovery’s sur­pris­ing breadth and brawn. The coun­try has put together the strongest three months of pure job growth since the Great Recession.

The unem­ploy­ment rate stayed at 8.3 per­cent. It was the first time in six months it didn’t fall, and that was because a half-million Amer­i­cans, per­haps finally see­ing hope in the econ­omy, started look­ing for work.

The Labor Depart­ment also said Fri­day that Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary, already two of the best months for jobs since the reces­sion, were even stronger than first esti­mated. It added 41,000 jobs to its total for Jan­u­ary and 20,000 for December.

Econ­o­mists were expect­ing Feb­ru­ary job growth of 210,000.

“It’s a very strong report,” said Bob Baur, chief global econ­o­mist at Prin­ci­pal Global Investors, an asset man­age­ment com­pany. “I could hardly find any­thing not to like in it.”

Since the begin­ning of Decem­ber, the coun­try has added 734,000 jobs. The only three-month stretch that was bet­ter since the reces­sion ended was March through May 2010, when the gov­ern­ment was hir­ing tens of thou­sands of tem­po­rary work­ers for the census.

Stocks rose steadily through the morn­ing. The Dow Jones indus­trial aver­age climbed 48 points to 12,956. Last week, it closed above 13,000 for the first time since May 2008, four months before the finan­cial crisis.

The improv­ing jobs pic­ture fig­ures to improve the re-election chances for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and to com­pli­cate the polit­i­cal strat­egy for the Repub­li­cans com­pet­ing for the right to replace him.

Obama on Fri­day vis­ited a man­u­fac­tur­ing plant run by Rolls-Royce, a maker of air­craft engines, in Vir­ginia, a state expected to be closely con­tested in Novem­ber. He told work­ers there that Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing is adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s.

“The econ­omy is get­ting stronger,” the pres­i­dent said. “When I come to places like this and I see the work that’s being done, it gives me con­fi­dence there are bet­ter days ahead. I would bet on Amer­i­can work­ers and Amer­i­can know-how any day of the week.”

Mitt Rom­ney, the leader in del­e­gates among Obama’s would-be chal­lengers, did not directly address the fresh eco­nomic data at a stop in Mis­sis­sippi, but he crit­i­cized Obama for fail­ing to bring the unem­ploy­ment rate below 8 percent.

The unem­ploy­ment rate has remained above 8 per­cent since Feb­ru­ary 2009, a month after Obama’s inau­gu­ra­tion, a point reg­u­larly ham­mered by Rom­ney. But as more jobs are cre­ated, it is increas­ingly likely that the rate will fall below 8 per­cent by Elec­tion Day.

Matt McDon­ald, a part­ner at Hamil­ton Place Strate­gies and for­mer Bush White House offi­cial, cal­cu­lates that the econ­omy needs to add about 185,000 jobs per month to get to that point.

“It will be a photo fin­ish to get below 8,” he said.

Hir­ing in Feb­ru­ary was broad-based and improved in both high-paying and low-paying indus­tries. Man­u­fac­tur­ing, min­ing and pro­fes­sional ser­vices all added jobs.

And gov­ern­ment — fed­eral, state and local — cut only 6,000 jobs in Feb­ru­ary and a revised 1,000 in Jan­u­ary. Last year, gov­ern­ment cut an aver­age of 22,000 jobs a month, tak­ing some of the eco­nomic punch out of job cre­ation in the pri­vate sector.

The pri­vate sec­tor added 233,000 jobs in February.

In all, 142.1 mil­lion Amer­i­cans reported that they had a job in Feb­ru­ary, the high­est since Jan­u­ary 2009, dur­ing the depths of the reces­sion. Man­u­fac­tur­ing pay­rolls are the high­est since April 2009.

The gov­ern­ment uses a sur­vey of pay­rolls to deter­mine how many jobs are added or lost each month. That is the sur­vey that pro­duced the 277,000 num­ber. But the pay­roll sur­vey tends to under­count small busi­nesses and does not count the self-employed.

It uses a sep­a­rate sur­vey of Amer­i­can house­holds to cal­cu­late the unem­ploy­ment rate. That sur­vey picks up hir­ing by com­pa­nies of all sizes, includ­ing small busi­nesses, com­pa­nies being started, farm work­ers and the self-employed.

The house­hold sur­vey found that 428,000 more Amer­i­cans reported hav­ing a job in Feb­ru­ary. When the econ­omy is improv­ing, many econ­o­mists say, the house­hold sur­vey does the bet­ter job of pick­ing that up because it detects small busi­ness hiring.

Over the past three months, the num­ber of employed peo­ple has risen by 1.45 mil­lion, the biggest three-month gain since March 2000.

Nor­mally the gain of 428,000 in Feb­ru­ary would lower the unem­ploy­ment rate. But a long-awaited trend is emerg­ing to off­set: Unem­ployed peo­ple who had given up look­ing for a job have started look­ing again.

The work force con­sists of those with a job and those look­ing for one. If you don’t have a job and aren’t look­ing, you’re not part of the work force, and the gov­ern­ment doesn’t count you as unemployed.

News that the econ­omy is start­ing to perk up has caused many of those “dis­cour­aged work­ers” to start look­ing again. They’re still unem­ployed, but they’re back in the work force. The work force surged by 476,000 in Feb­ru­ary and almost 1 mil­lion the past two months.

The labor force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, which mea­sures how many adults are work­ing or look­ing for work as a share of the adult pop­u­la­tion, rose in Feb­ru­ary for the first time since last August.

The rate came in at 63.9 per­cent, up from 63.7 in Jan­u­ary, the low­est since 1983. It had fallen grad­u­ally for two years — even after the worst lay­offs of the reces­sion were fin­ished, sug­gest­ing peo­ple were sim­ply giv­ing up look­ing for work.

A catchall mea­sure of the unem­ployed and the so-called under­em­ployed — peo­ple who are work­ing part-time but would rather by work­ing full-time — fell to 14.9 per­cent, the low­est the three years.

That fig­ure includes three groups: the part-time work­ers who want full-time work, peo­ple who are unem­ployed and look­ing for work, and peo­ple who are unem­ployed and have stopped looking.

Other eco­nomic indi­ca­tors have improved markedly in recent weeks. Con­sumer con­fi­dence in Feb­ru­ary was the high­est in a year, and unem­ploy­ment claims, the best mea­sure of the pace of lay­offs, have aver­aged 355,000 a week, near a four-year low.

The ser­vice sec­tor, which accounts for most jobs in the United States, is expand­ing faster, accord­ing to a pri­vate sur­vey this week. The indus­tries of min­ing, edu­ca­tional ser­vices, trans­porta­tion and ware­hous­ing are par­tic­u­larly strong.

Some com­pa­nies have to hire because they can’t squeeze any more work from their employ­ees. Worker pro­duc­tiv­ity rose last year at its slow­est pace in a gen­er­a­tion, sug­gest­ing com­pa­nies will have to hire to meet grow­ing demand.

Wages are still ris­ing only mod­estly. Aver­age hourly pay increased by 3 cents in Feb­ru­ary to $23.31. In the past year, it has gone up only 1.9 per­cent, trail­ing the rate of inflation.

The fac­tors restrain­ing the U.S. econ­omy seem to be eas­ing, or at least less dam­ag­ing than they used to be. Greece has struck a deal to get an inter­na­tional bailout and avoid a default later this month that could have rat­tled the world finan­cial system.

And while the price of gas has crept up almost every day for a month, and is the high­est on record for this time of year, that has less of a bite when the econ­omy is grow­ing and peo­ple feel more confident.

Another strong month of hir­ing makes it less likely that the Fed­eral Reserve will take addi­tional steps to help the econ­omy at its meet­ing next week.

Posted by AP News on Mar 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.