US employers added 275,000 jobs in February, surpassing expectations

NEW YORK - If the United States economy is slowing down, nobody told the labour market.

Employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the Labour Department reported on March 8, in another month exceeding expectations after January’s surprising surge. The unemployment rate increased to 3.9 per cent.

The repeat performance is additional evidence that four years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s jobs engine is nowhere near running out of steam.

“We’ve been expecting a slowdown in the labour market, a more material loosening in conditions, but we’re just not seeing that,” said High Frequency Economics’ chief economist Rubeela Farooqi.

In late 2023, economists predicted much more modest employment growth, with hiring concentrated in a few industries. But while some pandemic-inflated industries have shed jobs, expected downturns in sectors such as construction have not materialised.

Rising wages, attractive benefits and more flexible work schedules have drawn millions of workers off the sidelines, with elevated levels of immigration adding to the labour supply.

That does not mean the employment landscape looks rosy to everyone. Employee confidence, as measured by company ratings website Glassdoor, has been falling steadily as layoffs by technology and media companies have grabbed headlines.

That is especially true in white-collar professions such as human relations and consulting, while those in professions that require attending work in person – such as healthcare, construction and manufacturing – are more upbeat.

“It is a two-track labour market,” said Glassdoor chief economist Aaron Terrazas. “For skilled workers in risk-intensive industries, anyone who’s been laid off is having a hard time finding new jobs, whereas if you’re a blue-collar or front-line service worker, it’s still competitive.”

The last few months have been studded with strong economic data, leading analysts surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics to raise their forecasts for gross domestic product and lower their expectations for the trajectory of unemployment.

This has occurred even as inflation has eased, leading the Federal Reserve to telegraph its plans for interest rate cuts some time in 2024, which has raised growth expectations further.

Mr Mervin Jebaraj, director of the Centre for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, helped tabulate the survey responses. He said the mood was buoyed partly by fading trepidation over federal government shutdowns and draconian budget cuts, after several close calls since autumn in 2023. And he sees no obvious reason for the recovery to end soon.

“Once it starts going, it keeps going,” Mr Jebaraj said. “You had this external stimulus with all the trillions of dollars of government spending. Now it’s sort of self-sustaining, even though the money’s gone.” NYTIMES