The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent, with disadvantaged groups seeing the largest gains.
The economy added 678,000 jobs in February, pushing the unemployment rate down to 3.8 percent. The jobs numbers for December and January were also revised up 92,000. This left the number of jobs in the economy 2,105,000 below the pre-pandemic level.With the waning of omicron, the drop in the length of the average workweek in January was partially reversed. The rise in hours combined with the jump in jobs led to a 0.
For production and nonsupervisory workers, the hourly wage rose 6.7 percent over the last year, and 6.8 percent when comparing the last three months with the prior three. For production and nonsupervisory workers in retail, the hourly wage increased 7.7 percent over the last year, and at a 9.1 percent annual rate comparing the last three months with the prior three. In leisure and hospitality, the average hourly wage for production workers is up 14.
Most of the continuing gap in jobs from the pre-pandemic levels is concentrated in a small number of sectors. The health care sector, which added 64,000 jobs in February, is still down 306,000 from the pre-pandemic level. All of this is explained by a drop in employment of 398,000 jobs in nursing and residential care facilities.
The unemployment rate for Hispanics fell by a 0.5 percentage point to 4.4 percent, a 0.4 percentage point above the pre-pandemic low. The unemployment rate for workers without a high school degree fell by a 2.0 percentage point to 4.3 percent, the lowest on record. The unemployment for Asian Americans fell by a 0.5 percentage point to 3.1 percent, although this is still 1.0 percentage point above the pre-pandemic low.There were still 1.
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