Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the month in which job gains were revised from 353,000 to 229,000. The January numbers were restated.
U.S. employers added a robust 275,000 jobs in February as hiring stayed strong despite high interest rates, persistent inflation and uncertainty about the economic outlook in a presidential election year.
But payroll gains for December and January were revised down by an outsized 167,000, portraying a much weaker picture of the recent labor market. January’s booming 353,000 employment gains were downgraded significantly to 229,000, though that’s still a sturdy total.
And the unemployment rate rose from 3.7% to 3.9%, the highest since January 2022, the Labor Department said Friday.
Economists had estimated that 200,000 jobs were added in February, according to a Bloomberg survey.
For some forecasters, steady downward revisions to the payroll totals since early last year add to evidence that 2024 will bring a sharp slowdown in job growth.
“The current trend in payrolls is steady, but a clear downturn is coming,” says Ian Shepherdson, chief economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics.
Are wages catching up to inflation?
Average hourly pay rose 5 cents to $34.57, pushing down the yearly increase from 4.4% to 4.3%.
In January, cold and snowy weather in the Northeast and Midwest reduced the number of hours many employees worked and so artificially bumped up their hourly pay, economists say. Those effects largely…
