County loses 20500 jobs in January

More than 300,000 jobs were added to the USA economy last month and unemployment remained flat, labor statistics showed Friday.

Payrolls rose 313,000 in February, compared with the 205,000 median estimate in a survey of economists, and the two prior months were revised higher by 54,000, Labor Department figures showed Friday. Employment continued to rise in some real estate-related sectors, such as construction, retail trade, professional and business services, manufacturing, and financial activities. Average hourly earnings rose 0.1 per cent from the previous month after a 0.3 per cent increase in January. Wages are up 2.6 percent in the past year. This report shows the lowest level of unemployed blacks by numbers as well as a percentage since 2001 at 558,000.

However, the unemployment rate remained at 4.1%, while the annual earnings growth rate slowed to 2.6% last month. But as stock investors correctly concluded last month, if wages start rising too fast given weak gains in worker productivity, it would probably prompt Mr. Powell and his colleagues to tap the brakes on the economy a little harder (that is, raise interest rates more than they would otherwise). The 2.9% pace of growth was revised down to 2.8%, showing that wages picked up but not as quickly as initially thought.

Construction jobs expanded by 61,000 new positions. The consistently strong pace of hiring has led many more people who had been on the sidelines to start looking for work.

The US jobs market has now added an average of 242,000 jobs each month over the past three months.

As The Washington Post’s Danielle Paquette notes, those numbers went up even though 18 states boosted the minimum wage at the beginning of the year.

According to some analysts, gold is seeing little reaction to the stronger-than-expected employment data because wages continue to disappoint market expectations. But there are still plenty of working age adults out of the labor force. It is also less than the 20,600 jobs the industry added in January.

More modest wage growth cools fears about inflation and rising U.S. interest rates, both of which spooked the markets last month.

Many economists believe you need to create at least 140,000 a month just to remain at replacement levels and keep up with the growth of the overall population.

Jobs grew 175,000 in December, 239,000 in January and 313,000 in February demonstrating a healthy and growing economy. There is still room to run in this labor market recovery.