NY TIMES
The economy’s remarkably steady job-creation machine sputtered in February and produced a mere 20,000 jobs. It was the smallest gain in well over a year and came on top of other signs that the economy was off to a sluggish start in 2019.
For months, the labor market could be counted on for an upbeat counterpoint to negative developments, including a fragile global economy weighed down by trade tensions. In the United States, growth for the first quarter is expected to dance around the 1 percent bar, as the shot of adrenaline delivered by last year’s tax cuts fades.
Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, said Friday’s news from the Labor Department was worrisome. “This is a disappointing report,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat it.”
But the longer-term trend is what matters, and there were competing interpretations of whether the report was a troubling omen or a fluke.
Beyond the month’s payroll figure, the report offered some unambiguously good news, including 3.4 percent year-over-year wage growth, the strongest in a decade. Revisions to previous months’ estimates added 12,000 jobs, bringing the average gains for December, January and February to 186,000. The official jobless rate fell to 3.8 percent, from 4 percent in January.
A broader measure of employment that includes part-timers who would prefer full-time work and those too discouraged to search fell to 7.3 percent from 8.1 percent. “That’s a year’s worth of improvement in one month,” said G. Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at the private bank Brown Brothers Harriman.
Aftereffects of the government shutdown and wretched weather may have contributed to anomalies in the report. “This is the strangest jobs report I’ve seen in a long time,” Mr. Clemons said. “It’s bizarre. I can’t help but think there is noise in there.”
During the decade-long expansion, the economy has churned out 20 million jobs. The anemic job creation and rising wages could indicate that the pool of available workers was drying up, and employers were having trouble filling openings.
The economy’s remarkably steady job-creation machine sputtered in February and produced a mere 20,000 jobs. It was the smallest gain in well over a year and came on top of other signs that the economy was off to a sluggish start in 2019.
For months, the labor market could be counted on for an upbeat counterpoint to negative developments, including a fragile global economy weighed down by trade tensions. In the United States, growth for the first quarter is expected to dance around the 1 percent bar, as the shot of adrenaline delivered by last year’s tax cuts fades.
Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago, said Friday’s news from the Labor Department was worrisome. “This is a disappointing report,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat it.”
But the longer-term trend is what matters, and there were competing interpretations of whether the report was a troubling omen or a fluke.
Beyond the month’s payroll figure, the report offered some unambiguously good news, including 3.4 percent year-over-year wage growth, the strongest in a decade. Revisions to previous months’ estimates added 12,000 jobs, bringing the average gains for December, January and February to 186,000. The official jobless rate fell to 3.8 percent, from 4 percent in January.
A broader measure of employment that includes part-timers who would prefer full-time work and those too discouraged to search fell to 7.3 percent from 8.1 percent. “That’s a year’s worth of improvement in one month,” said G. Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at the private bank Brown Brothers Harriman.
Aftereffects of the government shutdown and wretched weather may have contributed to anomalies in the report. “This is the strangest jobs report I’ve seen in a long time,” Mr. Clemons said. “It’s bizarre. I can’t help but think there is noise in there.”
During the decade-long expansion, the economy has churned out 20 million jobs. The anemic job creation and rising wages could indicate that the pool of available workers was drying up, and employers were having trouble filling openings.