The Labor Department releases its February accounting of the U.S. labor market Friday. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect employers added 205,000 jobs during the month and see the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.0%. Here are five thing to watch in the report.
1. A new low
If the unemployment rate falls from the 4.1% level where it has held since October, it would be the first time joblessness was at or below 4% since December 2000. To put that in perspective, Amazon was known then as an online bookseller. But while the headline unemployment rate is trending near a two-decade low, a broader measure that includes those too frustrated to look for work and those stuck in part-time jobs remains somewhat elevated compared with past economic expansions. That rate, known as the U-6, has edged up in recent months and suggests there is additional slack in the labor market.
2. Job-growth trend
Economists expect employers added at least 200,000 workers to payrolls for the second straight month (and fourth month in the past five). That would start off 2018 at a better hiring pace than last year’s average monthly job growth of 181,000. An acceleration in hiring runs counter to economists’ expectation for job gains to ease in a historically tight labor market.
3. Wages wind back
Average hourly earnings, the primary measure of wage growth, advanced 2.9% in January from a year earlier. That was the best 12-month gain since the recession ended in 2009. Economists, however, expect the pace of wage growth to ease. January’s gain was led by raises for managers. Some analysts say that may partially reflect hourly employees missing work in January due to winter weather and the flu. If those lower-wage employees worked more hours last month, that would weigh on average earnings.
4. Going to work?
The share of Americans working or looking for work has stabilized in recent years, after falling since the early 2000s. But the labor-force participation rate is still trending near the lowest level since the late 1970s, when the share of women entering the labor market was still on the rise. And in the past two months, the rate has edged down from a recent high touched last fall.
5. Volatile measures of unemployment
The unemployment rate for black workers has trended near the lowest level on record in recent months, a fact President Donald Trump highlights. But the data tends be volatile month-to-month due to small sample sizes. For example, the black-unemployment rate jumped nearly 1 percentage point in January from a record low in December. More broadly, the rate for black Americans is near the same level as in 2000, when overall unemployment similarly as low, but it’s still well above the rate for whites.
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from Real Time Economics http://ift.tt/2FwxfrJ
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