Pres. Trump’s “Golden Touch” 1st Month: Unemployment Down, Wages Up
From Daily Mail:
U.S. employers added a robust 235,000 jobs in February and wages rose at a healthy clip, a sign the economy remains on solid footing after nearly eight years of recovery.
The Labor Department says the unemployment rate fell to a low 4.7 percent from 4.8 percent.
More Americans launched job searches, lifting the proportion of Americans working or looking for work to the highest level in nearly a year.
And the labor force participation rate rose to 63 percent, a high water mark since ten months ago. That jump is an indication that people who have been on the sidelines are rejoining the labor market.
The healthy job growth, decent pay gains and falling unemployment rate will make the Federal Reserve even more likely to raise short-term rates when it meets next week.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen said last week that it would be ‘appropriate to gradually increase the federal funds rate if the economic data continue to come in about as we expect.’
The job gains were boosted by 58,000 new construction jobs, the most in nearly a decade. That figure was likely boosted by unseasonably warm weather in much of the nation.
Wage gains were also recorded in February; average hourly earnings rose six cents, or 0.2 percent, to $26.09.
And in the manufacturing sector, payrolls rose by 95,000 new positions, the highest such one-month increase since March of 2000.
Trump himself said repeatedly during his presidential campaign that some Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers are not trustworthy.
