February Jobs Thaw
Optimism tempered by reality.
The February jobs report contained a bit of good news this month, though it is just a bit. Some 175,000 jobs were created last month, numbers for December and January were revised up by 25,000, and more people entered the workforce. All good things, though of course the last item meant that headline unemployment ticked up 0.1 percentage points to 6.7%, the first increase in 14 months. And the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore explains why optimism should be tempered: The added jobs are “still below the 200,000 to 250,000 a month we need to bring down the real unemployment rate and to keep pace with young people entering the workforce.” Furthermore, “there are more than 2 million FEWER Americans in the labor force today than one year ago.” Bottom line: The Obama “recovery” plods on.
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- jobs report
- unemployment
- economy