National job report may lead to rate increase by Fed.

The strong monthly jobs report on Friday — representing President Donald Trump’s first full month in office — should sweep away any last-minute reservations harbored by Federal Reserve policymakers about raising the benchmark interest rate when they meet next week.

With the Labor Department reporting a gain of 235,000 jobs for the month, Republicans and Democrats quickly jostled for credit.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said of Trump, “He’s jumpstarted job creation, not only through his executive action but because of the surge in economic confidence and optimism that has been inspired since his election.”

Trump, who, as a candidate, repeatedly dismissed the official jobs reports as phony, reposted a comment on Twitter from the conservative website Drudge Report that said, “GREAT AGAIN: +235,000.” Spicer later quoted Trump on his faith in the report, “They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.”

But Republican self-congratulation clearly irked Democrats. Tom Perez, labor secretary in the Obama administration and now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, countered that Trump had “absolutely nothing” to do with the job gains.

“Trump inherited an economy from Barack Obama with the longest streak of private sector job growth in history,” he said.

The Labor Department repeated that it had not changed the way it collected and analyzed jobs data since Trump took office.

“It’s business as usual,” said Megan Kindelan, director of public affairs at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Although the economic anxiety that helped put Trump in the White House remains, the official jobless rate is near what the Fed considers full employment — a threshold where, in theory, at least, everyone who wants a job at the going rate can find one. The official jobless rate fell to 4.7 percent, from 4.8 percent in January.

At the same time, jobless claims are near a 44-year low. Revisions to January’s estimates raised the threemonth average of monthly job gains to 209,000 and annual wage growth to 2.8 percent, further bolstering the case for those who say the economy is strong enough to withstand a rate increase.

The overall economic momentum received a push from February’s unusually warm weather, with almost a quarter of the jobs — about 58,000 — coming from construction. Manufacturing and mining rose, too.

Also significant was the increase in the labor participation rate to 63 percent, a result of rising employment even among people without a high school diploma.

“There’s got to be some optimism that these people are feeling they finally have a chance,” said Diane Swonk, founder and chief executive of DS economics in Chicago.