WASHINGTON (AP) – America’s job market boomed in February. He raised hopes that the launch of viral vaccines, the distribution of federal aid and the increasing availability and capacity of consumers to go out and spend will revive the economy as the weather warms.
Employers added 379,000 jobs, the government said on Friday, the most since October and far exceeding economists’ forecasts. The unemployment rate, which fell to 6.2%, has now fallen almost every month since it peaked at 14.8% in April last year after a pandemic broke out in the United States and caused staggering losses. jobs.
Closed for much of last year, the economy has gradually reopened as more people are vaccinated and fewer are infected. The number of new confirmed cases of coronavirus has dropped to an average of less than 60,000 a day from nearly 250,000 in early January, according to Johns Hopkins University.
A government aid package late last year also delivered $ 600 checks to most adults, in addition to an even bigger economic bailout last spring. President Joe Biden is trying to give households another boost with a $ 1.9 trillion aid package, which would add benefits to the unemployed and send $ 1,400 to most families.
“Improving health conditions, expanding the distribution of vaccines and a generous fiscal stimulus will form a strong cocktail that raises real (economic) growth to 7% in 2021,” reversing last year’s 3.5% decline, said Gregory Daco and Lydia Boussour from Oxford Economics in a Study Note. They expect the economy to add an average of about 580,000 jobs a month this year.
Here are five reviews from the February job report:
REGISTERED RESTAURANTS
No area of the economy has suffered more devastation from the pandemic recession than the leisure and hospitality sector. Now, as more bars, restaurants and hotels reopen at full capacity, this industry has regained many of its lost jobs.
In February, leisure and hospitality added 355,000 jobs – more than 90% of the total earnings of the economy. The added jobs included 286,000 at restaurants and bars alone.
Many of these jobs are returning as California and Texas – the two most populous states – reopen their economies more fully, along with other states. However, last year’s job losses in the leisure and hospitality industry were so profound that the sector continued to fall by 3.5 million jobs from its pre-pandemic level. Even if the torrid pace of February could be maintained, it would take another 10 months for the leisure and hospitality industry to regain its pre-pandemic jobs. And that doesn’t even include the extra jobs that this sector would have added in the last year under normal circumstances.
AN EARLY SPRING
Employment growth in February was about twice as high as economists expected. And the landscape looked better in the rearview mirror. The government’s revised estimates added 38,000 net jobs for December and January combined.
Most economists also raised a dose of bad news in Friday’s report: a loss of 61,000 jobs in construction, which was likely a temporary consequence of the winter frost and power outages in Texas and other parts. And the elimination of 86,000 government jobs in February partly reflected technical problems involved in accounting for the closure and reopening of schools in the face of the pandemic.
A LOST YEAR
A year ago, the pandemic did not yet hit the United States hard. As a result, last month’s data illustrates how much the virus has affected the labor market in 12 months. Comparisons with pre-pandemic days are ugly.
Despite last month’s impressive gain, the economy is still declining by about 9.5 million jobs since February 2020. And the proportion of adults who are either working or looking for a job – the so-called labor force participation rate employment – was 61.4% in February, down sharply from 63.3% a year earlier. This proportion is now close to where it was in the mid-1970s, before a huge influx of women entered the American workforce. Moreover, the unemployment rate of 6.2% in February, although significantly lower than last spring, is still high compared to 3.5% a year earlier.
RACIAL INEQUALITY
February’s job growth has done nothing to reduce the chronic disparities between white Americans and minorities that reflect broader economic inequalities.
The unemployment rate for black Americans rose last month for the first time since April, from 9.2% in January to 9.9% in February. The number of African-Americans who said they were employed fell by 164,000. And the number of those who said they were unemployed increased by 129,000.
In contrast, unemployment fell slightly last month for whites (from 5.7% to 5.6%, a much lower rate than for minorities) and for Hispanics (from 8.6% to 8.5%).
GONE FOREVER
Employers continued to call back workers they tracked after the virus struck last year. But many jobs seem to have disappeared forever, and those who held these positions could be out of work indefinitely.
The number of Americans temporarily laid off fell by 517,000 last month to 2.2 million. At the same time, the number of permanent unemployed remained stuck at 3.5 million, down only 6,000 from January. Currently, permanent job losers have exceeded the number of temporary unemployed in each month of September.