US job growth keeps rolling along in February

It was another "Jobs Friday" yesterday, this time for February. And the US jobs market continues to be in a very good place.

JUST IN: Another hot jobs report! -- The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February, beating expectations. January’s blockbuster number barely revised to 504,000.

Unemployment rate up slightly to 3.6%

Wages rose 4.6% in the past year (cooling off some, but not much)

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) March 10, 2023

Strong hiring across the board in February, except for warehouse & IT:

Hospitality +105,000
Retail +50,000
Gov't +46,000 (K12 educ. +23k)
Biz +45,000
Healthcare +44,000
Construction +24,000
Social assistance +19,000

**Transport/warehouse -22,500**
**IT was down -25,000 jobs**

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) March 10, 2023

So this might be the first indication of all of the reported tech layoffs appearing in the jobs reports. Also note that services continue to see jobs come back (especially in hospitality sectors), and even retail recovered after losing jobs through much of 2022.

February is also a good month to look at for another reason, because February 2020 is when employment peaked before the COVID-related shutdowns and adjustments. We exceeded that February 2020 peak last June, and are now up by nearly 3 million jobs (and 3.355 million in the private sector).

Even the increase in unemployment happened for the "good reason" - more Americans entered the work force, and about half of them got jobs.

The best news in the job report? More people are looking for work.

419,000 people entered the labor force in February.
The unemployment rate went up b/c more people are looking for jobs, not b/c of layoffs.

This is good news. More workers are returning. pic.twitter.com/yphqeu1WCA

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) March 10, 2023

For months, we've been asking where are the workers?

Well...the prime-age workforce (ages 25 to 54) is now back to its pre-pandemic level.

This is encouraging. It means we might be able to cool off the job market without needing to lay a ton of people off. https://t.co/rsjwChgY21

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) March 10, 2023

But the overall employment-population ratio is down by nearly a full point compared to February 2020, which is indicative of the demographic challenges and post-COVID changes that have happened in this country. So we really don't have a large number of prime-age workers on the sidelines, but we do have more people to serve with less people available to do so.

That could be a good thing for workers, because it may make it more difficult to lay people off and/or have them suffer through longer lengths of unemployment, because the demands remain with fewer workers available to replace and/or compete for open positions.

But hourly wage growth also moderated (+0.24%), and really isn't causing any type of wage-price spiral. Combine it with the best job growth in decades, and it's something that both central bankers and workers should be happy about.

It still remains stunning to me that we're experiencing one of the fastest paces of sustained job growth in our history during a period in which doom-and-gloomers and recessionistas dominated our headlines.https://t.co/0h4D3TsEcH

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) March 10, 2023

As I've said before, why would we keep jacking up rates to stop what seems to be a great economic situation? In February 2023, it looks like we continued to have strong job growth, good wage growth, and nothing to stop inflation from continuing to drift down from its highs in June. Let's take it and keep on rolling.