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The February jobs report on Friday showed the U.S. economy added 379,000 jobs last month, with the unemployment rate falling to 6.2% from 6.3%.
Economists polled by Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal had on average expected a gain of 210,000 jobs and a 6.3% unemployment rate.
Below are initial reactions from analysts and economists as U.S. stocks SPX, -0.34% DJIA, -0.04% recovered some ground after three days of declines, even as the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.38% struggled to follow suit. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.579% briefly topped 1.60%, its highest level this year though.
- “Green shoots of economic recovery were apparent in today’s jobs report. The engine of economic recovery is restarting as the pandemic’s winter wave recedes, although there is still a long way to go,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, which offers job searches along with reviews of companies.
- “Better and more better is coming next month and beyond. The core story here is that the re-opening of services will be the dominant factor in the payroll numbers over the next few months,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
- “We anticipate improving health conditions, expanding vaccine distribution, and generous fiscal stimulus will form a powerful cocktail that lifts real GDP growth to 7% in 2021. The economy is expected to add seven million jobs this year while the unemployment rate falls below 5% by year-end,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.
- “Today’s release while somewhat better than consensus is not significant for the economic outlook. It won’t be until the economy is fully reopened that we will have a sense of how quickly the labor market will bounce back and how fast price pressures rise. One sour note is that the number of workers on permanent layoffs increased – the gains were all made by those who had been laid off temporarily,” said Eric Winograd, senior economist for fixed income at Alliance Bernstein.
