February Unemployment Data

Today, the Department of Labor released its February employment numbers and (I'm not sure the last time I wrote this) they were quite good.  The headline figures:  236,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate down .2 of a percent to 7.7%.  Revisions of the previous two months' new jobs' numbers were down by a total of 15,000 jobs, leading to an average monthly job gain over the past three months of 195,000.  Average earnings ticked up a few cents this month, with gains over the past year at 2.1%.  Also, the construction industry was one of the biggest job gainers, perhaps indicating that the housing industry is finally back. 

-JH