U.S. hiring surges 313K jobs in Feb.
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers went on a hiring binge in February, adding 313,000 jobs, amid rising business confidence lifted by the Trump administration’s tax cuts and a resilient global economy.
The robust hiring, reported Friday by the Labor Department, was t he strongest in 11⁄ years. It was accompanied by the biggest surge in 15 years in the number of people either working or looking for work. That kept the nation’s unemployment rate unchanged for a fifth straight month at 4.1 percent.
At the same time, average wage growth slowed to 2.6 percent in February from a year earlier. That was down from January’s revised pace of 2.8 percent, which had spooked investors because it raised fears of inflation.
The hiring boom caught many economists off guard, because they expected a smaller — though still healthy — increase. Job gains typically slow as the unemployment rate falls, because companies run out of workers to hire.
The economy has expanded for 104 straight months, or nearly nine years, the third-largest expansion on record, and hiring often declines as recessions fade into the past.
Yet job growth has accelerated in recent months. Companies have added an average of 242,000 jobs a month over the past three months, above 2017’s pace of 182,000.
“The February employment report was unambiguously strong, confirming that the U.S. labor market is on fire,” said Michelle Girard, chief U.S. economist at NatWest Markets. “The pace of job growth is gaining momentum — a very impressive development at this stage of the economic The brisk pace of hiring surprised economists, who expected a smaller but still healthy job growth. cycle.”
The Trump administration’s tax cuts appear to have lifted optimism among consumers and businesses. U.S. employers have also benefited from a strengthened global economy. And consumers are more confident than they have been since 2000.
Investors celebrated the news. The bull market reac- hed its ninth anniversary Friday, with market indexes nearly quadrupling since March 2009.
The muted wage growth is a relief to Wall Street, because faster raises could spur higher inflation and additional interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve.
The picture drawn by Friday’s jobs report is a
Stocks jump, Nasdaq sets record
NEW YORK — The S&P 500 index rose 47.60 points, or 1.7 percent, to 2,786.57.
The Dow Jones industrial average rallied 440.53 points, or 1.8 percent, to 25,335.74.
The Nasdaq composite surged 132.86 points, or 1.8 percent, to 7,560.81. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks added 25.18 points, or 1.6 percent, to 1,597.14. mixed one for the Fed, which seeks to raise shortterm interest rates at just the right pace: enough to forestall inflation but not so fast as to slow growth.
The Fed is considered certain to raise rates when it next meets in two weeks.
The economy has now gained jobs for 89 straight months, the longest streak on record. That has helped address many of the nation’s long-term problems dating to the Great Recession.
For example, more Americans are coming off the sidelines and looking for work, reversing a trend from the first few years after the downturn when many of the unemployed gave up on the job hunt and stopped looking.
The proportion of adults working or looking for work jumped to 63 percent from 62.7 percent, still far below its pre-recession levels in 2007. But it has stabilized in the past three years, even as millions of baby boomers have retired. That suggests that enough younger people are stepping in to offset those retirements.
The proportion of adults in their prime working years — defined as ages 25 to 54 — with jobs rose sharply to 79.3 percent, just a few tenths of a point below its pre-recession level.