Strong Payrolls May Be Muted by Wages Contraction

The U.S. Labor Department showed a stronger than expected Employment Situation for the month of February. This report had a lot of data that may give the bulls the continued support for strength, and it may also give the Fed hawks more room to push for continued interest rate hikes.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by some 242,000 in the month of February. Bloomberg had the consensus estimate at 190,000, with the Econoday range being 168,000 to 217,000. Dow Jones was calling for 200,000. January’s small gain of 151,000 reported initially was raised to 172,000.

The private sector payrolls were up by 230,000 in the month of February. Bloomberg had its consensus estimate at 183,000, with an Econoday range of 156,000 to 215,000. January’s smaller gain of 158,000 that was initially reported was raised to 182,000.

Friday’s report kept the official unemployment rate static at 4.9%. The U6, the unofficial unemployment rate, ticked down to 9.7% and the labor force participation rate ticked marginally higher by 0.2 percentage points to 62.9%. There were 2.2 million are considered to be long-term unemployed.
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One standout issue was that average hourly earnings dropped by 0.1% rather than continuing the trend of higher wages. Bloomberg was calling for a 0.2% gain in wages growth.

Another decline was seen in the average workweek, dropping to 34.4 hours from 34.6 hours the prior month. Bloomberg was calling for the workweek to remain static at 34.6 hours.