Jobs and Economy

There was a pretty good jobs report yesterday.

The U.S. economy added 313,000 jobs in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Economists polled by Reuters expected a gain of 200,000.

Wages, meanwhile, grew less than expected, rising 2.6 percent on an annualized basis. Stronger-than-expected wage growth helped spark a market correction in the previous month.

Construction jobs led the way, with 61,000 new positions, followed by retail and professional and business services (50,000 apiece), manufacturing (31,000) and financial activities (28,000). Health care added 19,000 while mining saw 9,000 new jobs.

All pretty good numbers and we even had some revisions in the prior months.  The unemployment rate stayed the same because a lot of the jobs went to people who had been out of the workforce as workforce participation also jumped.

The news was encouraging to the stock markets as we saw a nice rally in all three major indices.

How much of this is due to new policies since we changed administrations?  Hard to say.

We have of course had fairly consistent job growth since the recession so this continues that trend.

Monthly Job Data

Still the numbers are pretty good so maybe some of it is related to the tax bonus industry got.

Construction is a good sign.

We of course haven't seen any impact from the recent tariffs and we had a higher trade deficit which may be related to increased need for materials.

Not sure how much of this is changing the situation in the rust belt or mining communities that suffered the most from our changing economy, doubt it is a big impact.

Still it was a good report.