By Tom Burnett CFA
On March 6, 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the employment data for the month of February. The growth in jobs was an unexpected 273,000, well above consensus estimates. In addition, the jobs numbers for December and January were revised upwards by a total of 85,000. The unemployment rate dipped to a 50-year low of 3.5% and rates for many segments (African American, Hispanic, Asian) remained at record low levels. Even the unemployment rate for Teenagers fell-it was 13.3% a year ago and declined to 11.0% in the latest period. One important measure of the strong jobs market looks at the ‘long-term’ unemployed, defined as unemployment duration. That category includes workers who have been looking for jobs for 27 weeks or more. The latest duration figure is 1.1 million, down by 177,000 from a year ago. The total employment at the end of February was 158.8 million, up almost 2.0 million from a year ago.
Tom Burnett CFA is Director of Research