Great News!….
Gas prices and others are STILL rising……
Oh?
Immigrant labor is HELPING these numbers….
And the job gains are NOT across the board….
The unemployment rate rose slightly to 3.9 percent, continuing the longest stretch of unemployment below 4 percent in decades.
The report, which beat expectations, marked the 39th straight month of job gains — in what economists have widely considered an exceptionally strong recovery from the widespread job losses wrought by the pandemic.
“Once again, jobs came in better than expected, pushing back … any recession calls,” Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at financial advisory firm Carson Group, said in a written note. “The bottom line is our economy continues to chug along, being led by employment.”
As the election year enters full swing, President Biden has repeatedly touted the booming jobs market and easing inflation as a political victory, including in his fiery State of the Union address Thursday night.
And with inflation continuing to ease, Americans’ gloomy feelings about the economy have started to lift.
Still, the report was sprinkled with signs of labor market cooling. Average hourly wage growth slowed considerably in February, compared with January, to $34.57 an hour, but that increase is still 4.3 percent more than the previous year….
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The resilience of the labor market has been aided by the recent expansion of the labor force, particularly the strong return of women who left their jobs during the pandemic and an influx of immigration to the United States. Economists say the arrival of immigrants in particular has been a key factor in closing severe gaps in the economy that have threatened the country’s ability to recover from pandemic shutdowns….
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Economists do expect the unemployment rate to climb in 2024 as the full impact of high interest rates ripples through the economy — with a recent Congressional Budget Office report projecting that unemployment will rise to 4.4 percent by the end of 2024. Other data shows that some employers who had been proceeding cautiously are beginning to resume investing in their workforce in anticipation of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates in the summer.
Some economists worry that recent job gains that are concentrated within only a few sectors could spell trouble on the horizon, as the broader economy becomes more vulnerable to shocks within a specific sector…..