US employers stepped up hiring in February and the jobless rate fell to a more than 6-1/2-year low of 5.5 percent, which could put pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in June.
Nonfarm payrolls increased 295,000 last month after rising 239,000 in January, the Labor Department said on Friday. The broad job gains came despite disruptive weather conditions that took hold across large parts of the country in mid-February.
The decline in the unemployment rate from 5.7 percent in January took it to its lowest level since May 2008 and into territory that some Fed officials consider consistent with full employment.
"The labor market is on a roll. This should ease fears at the Fed that the global downturn and sharp drop in oil prices are materially disrupting the U.S. economic outlook, and keep the Fed firmly on course for a June lift-off," said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco.
The decline in the unemployment rate, however, largely reflected people dropping out of the labor force.
But economists, who had expected payrolls to rise only 240,000 and the unemployment rate to fall to 5.6 percent, noted that other indicators monitored by the U.S. central bank showed a rapidly tightening labor market.
February marked the 12th straight month that employment gains have been above 200,000, the longest such run since 1994.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article