Ffp3
ffp3, 273,000 jobs were added in February; Stuart Varney reacts to the 'blockbuster' numbers and what to expect in March with the coronavirus. While the coronavirus continues to pose a threat to the nation, it certainly didn’t put a damper on America’s strong and growing economy in February. Even with coronavirus concerns triggering stock market volatility and skittish central bankers implementing “emergency” interest rate cuts, the country gained an astounding 273,000 new jobs last month, matching January’s total and demolishing economists’ expectations again.
ffp3 - Thanks to that strong performance, the unemployment rate is now back down to a 50-year low of 3.5 percent. And the unemployment rate didn’t decline simply because people dropped out of the labor force, as was so generally the case during President Barack Obama's time in office. For the second month in a row, the labor participation rate clocked in at a steady 62.4 percent, a high last seen in 2013. DEMAND GROWS FOR WELDING JOBS IN US AS STUDENTS TURN AWAY FROM TRADE SCHOOLS
ffp3, Along with upward revisions to employment data from the previous two months, which added a combined 87,000 jobs, the newest jobs report revealed that the economy created 360,000 previously unreported positions over the past three months. Based on the new figures, the Trump economy has created an average of more than 243,000 jobs per month since December. That’s even higher than the monthly average for Donald Trump’s entire presidency, reflecting an economy that continues to gain steam no matter what external obstacles we encounter.
ffp3 - With all those jobs, the competition for workers also continued to drive wage growth. For the 19th consecutive month, average hourly earnings for all workers grew at a healthy 3 percent rate, faster than at any point during the anemic Obama-era “recovery” from the Great Recession. Breaking out the numbers between workers and managers, workers benefited from the bulk of the increase, as has been the case throughout this blue-collar economic boom. While workers’ wages increased by 3.3 percent, managerial wages increased by only 1.8 percent.
ffp3 - CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER In fact, things have been so good since the beginning of the year the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow forecasting model is projecting 3.1 percent gross domestic product growth for the first quarter of 2020. You read that right. In the midst of the stock market’s gross overreaction to the coronavirus, GDPNow is forecasting 3.1 percent GDP growth with less than four weeks left in the quarter. The bottom line is that the coronavirus has yet to put a serious dent in either the U.S. economy or the labor market.