The February Jobs Report

First Friday of a month means we get the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the prior month, in this case February.  Again, there are two components to the report, items reported from the Household Survey and items reported from the Establishment (business) survey.  The household survey says there are 7.1 million people and a 4.1% unemployment rate, up slightly from the prior month.  According to this survey there were 588,000 fewer people working in February, a big drop, but one that only partly offset a big jump in the number of people working in January.  Only 62% of those who could be in the work force are, which is a big part of our financial issues.  There was a pretty significant rise, 460,000, in those who work part-time but would prefer to work full-time.

The establishment report says we added 151,000 jobs, up from a downwardly revised 126,000 in January.  As a reminder these numbers tend to be substantially revised over time.  Remember also that jobs is not the same as people employed, as some people work multiple jobs.  The headline number was about what was expected.  There was a modest increase in wages.  Federal government employment declined, no further comment needed.  Some increase in health care, financial activities and transportation jobs.   I don’t know how the DOGE activities will affect reports like this.  I would hope someone could figure out how to get a higher response rate on the surveys and a more reliable initial set of numbers.  (BLS Report)