(Headline USA) Over the month of February, U.S. employers added roughly 151,000 jobs. Per a Labor Department report on Friday, this marked a notable increase in job creation from January, when U.S. businesses added 125,000 in January.
Economists initially projected that businesses would add 160,000 new jobs in February. That said, the unemployment rate climbed upward slightly to 4.1% as the number of unemployed Americans rose by 203,000.
Employment increased in the healthcare, finance, transportation, and warehousing sectors. The federal government recently cut 10,000 jobs, the most since June 2022.
Restaurants and bars experienced a loss of 28,000 jobs in February in addition to a job loss of nearly 30,000 in January.
“The labor market continues to hold up, but we’re still a far cry from where we were a year or two years ago,’’ observed Sarah House, a senior economist at Wells Fargo.
House believes hiring will slow down and unemployment will also increase as President Donald Trump continues to impose tariffs on the United States’ trading partners — economic policy moves that many mainstream economists believe will raise the prices of basic consumer goods.
On the average hourly earnings front, these earnings increased by 0.3% in February, falling from a 0.4% spike in January.
It remains to be seen how the U.S. economy will look in the next few months.
With the Trump administration following the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) recommendations to slash wasteful spending and burdensome regulations, the private sector is expected to rebound and expand its operations.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
