The Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported Friday that, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the economy created 295,000 new jobs in February. That's the 12th consecutive month new job generation has exceeded 200,000. Of the total, 288,000 were in the private sector and 7,000 in the public sector.
The tally for December remained at 329,000, but the bureau revised its January figure from 257,000 to 239,000
The average monthly gain for the year ending in February is 295,250. The best previous 12-month stretch in recent past was in 1999-2000, when the average monthly job gain was 274,000.
The official (and problematic) "headline" unemployment rate—which is called U3 in BLS jargon—fell to 5.5 percent. U6, which is the bureau's gauge of unemployment and underemployment that includes people with no job at all, part-time workers who want full-time jobs but can't find one, and many "discouraged" workers—fell to 11 percent from 11.3 percent.
The employment-population ratio remained at 59.3 percent. The labor force participation rate slipped 0.1 point to 62.8 percent. The civilian labor force fell by 178,000 in February after growing 1,051,000 in January.
By the BLS's tally, 8.7 million people were officially out of work in February. This does not include Americans who have left the workforce and still want a job but have given up finding one.
An important metric is the percentage of workers in their prime years—aged 25-54—who are employed. That reached a peak of 81.9 percent in April 2000. In December 2007, the month the Great Recession began, it was 79.7 percent. It hit bottom at 74.8 percent in November 2010. It's been slowly rising ever since and is now 77.3 percent, up 0.1 from January.
Another metric, wage growth, remains soft.
The bureau notes that "the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 90,000." That means the "real" number of new jobs created in February wasn't 295,000 but somewhere in a range between 205,000 and 385,000.
For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.
Some key elements in the report:
Hours & Wages
• The average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees was unchanged at 20.80.
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payrolls was unchanged at 34.6 hours for the fifth consecutive month
•Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls rose 3 cents to $24.78.
• The manufacturing workweek remained at 41.0 hours.
• The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.8 hours.
Among other news in the January job report:
Demographic breakdown of official (U3) seasonally adjusted jobless rate:
• African American: 10.4 percent, up from 10.3 percent in January
• Latino: 6.6 percent, down from 6.7 percent in January
• Asian (not seasonally adjusted): 4.0 percent, unchanged from January
• American Indian (data not collected on monthly basis)
• White: 4.7 percent, down from 4.9 percent in January
• Adult women (20 and older): 4.9 percent, down from 5.1 percent in January
• Adult Men (20 and older): 5.2 percent, down from 5.3 percent in January
• Teenagers (16-19): 17.1 percent, up/down from 18.8 percent in January
Duration of unemployment:
• Less than five weeks: 2.43 million, up from 2.383 million in January
• 5 to 14 weeks: 2.223 million, down from 2.318 million in January
• 15 to 26 weeks: 1.335 million, down from 1.38 million in January
• 27 weeks and more: 2.709 million, down from 2.8 million in January
Job gains and losses in selected categories:
• Professional services: + 51,000
• Transportation & warehousing : 18,500
• Leisure & hospitality: + 66,000
• Information: + 7,000
• Health care & social assistance: + 32,800
• Retail trade: + 32,000
• Construction: + 29,000
• Manufacturing: + 8,000
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in February for the previous 10 years.
February 2005: + 239,000
February 2006: + 315,000
February 2007: + 88,000
February 2008: - 87,000
February 2009: - 703,000
February 2010: - 68,000
February 2011: + 167,000
February 2012: + 247,000
February 2013: + 314,000
February 2014: + 188,000
February 2015: + 295,000
••• •••
The BLS jobs report is the product of a pair of surveys, one of more than 410,000 business establishments called Current Employment Statistics, and one called the Current Population Survey, which questions 60,000 householders each month. Here is the BLS's explanation of its methodology. The establishment survey determines how many new jobs were added. It is always calculated on a seasonally adjusted basis determined by a frequently tweaked formula. The BLS report only provides a snapshot of what's happening at a single point in time.
It's important to understand that the jobs-created-last-month-numbers that it reports are not "real." Not because of a conspiracy, but because statisticians apply formulas to the raw data, estimate the number of jobs created by the "birth" and "death" of businesses, and use other filters to fine-tune the numbers. And, always good to remember, in the fine print, they tell us, with a 90 percent confidence level, that the actual number of newly created jobs reported each falls within a plus or minus 90,000 range.