BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2002: RELEASED TODAY: The unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 5.5 percent in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Nonfarm payroll employment was up by 66,000 in February, following several months of large job losses. February gains in several industries, however, can be attributed to special factors. Manufacturing employment continued to decline, although at a slower pace.
The rapid turnaround in the U.S. economy reached the nation's job market last month as payroll employment rose for the first time in seven months, the jobless rate ticked down and the number of industries adding workers continued to rise, the Labor Department reported today. After digging into the details of today's report, a number of analysts said the unemployment rate might well increase again somewhat in coming months as employers concentrate on using their current employees more intensively in order to hold down costs and boost profits. Meanwhile, the increase in average hourly earnings of workers has slowed, the department said. Last month hourly earnings rose two cents to $14.63. That was 3.7 percent higher than the figure a year ago and the smallest increase for a 12-month period since that ending in September 2000. (http://www.washingtonpost.com) The nation's unemployment rate unexpectedly slipped to 5.5 percent in February as businesses, after slashing payrolls for six straight months, added 66,000 new workers. It was the strongest signal yet that the country's first recession in a decade is over. The Labor Department reported Friday that the jobless rate dropped by 0.1 percentage point in February to the lowest level since October. Before the report was released, private economists had been looking for the jobless rate to rise by 0.1 percentage point. The addition of 66,000 jobs during the month followed losses that had averaged 146,000 a month since the recession started in March 2001. It was the largest payroll increase since February 2001. In the jobs report, the largest increases last month occurred in retail, though Labor Department economists stressed caution in interpreting the numbers as a sign of strength in that industry. Retail businesses added 58,000 jobs in February. Large seasonal layoffs always occur in retailing in January and February following the holiday-season buildup. But holiday hiring last year was well below normal, so there were fewer workers to lay off. (http://www.boston.com) Economists had forecast an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent and little change in payrolls, according to Briefing.com. The report was especially surprising because the unemployment rate typically lags the rest of the economy, worsening even as the economy recovers because businesses usually delay hiring until they're convinced a rebound is underway. The unemployment rate also fell in January, but some economists attributed the drop to a shrinking labor force, since it seemed some workers had stopped looking for jobs, taking themselves out of the labor force. But the labor force grew by 821,000 in February, making the drop in the unemployment rate much more meaningful. What's more, the number of people who still want a job but haven't looked for one in four weeks - meaning they're no longer counted as part of the labor force - fell by 449,000. But some economists still were hesitant to read too much into the report, expressing skepticism that the labor market could possibly be bouncing back so soon. (http://cnn.com) Nonfarm business productivity increased at an annual rate of 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001 because of upward revisions to the output measures, according to revised figures released March 7 by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase was much stronger than economists had expected in the midst of a recession. In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the revised fourth quarter productivity numbers were "suspiciously too strong." The surprisingly strong fourth quarter gain "was not only remarkably robust, but very unlikely," Greenspan said. "But if you smooth out fluctuations in the data over the long term, you will see that fundamental changes have occurred" that will allow productivity to continue to grow at a faster rate than it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, he said. (Daily Labor Report, page D-1) U.S. workers and companies are emerging from the economic contraction leaner and more productive than earlier thought, according to new data from the Labor Department. Nonfarm productivity--a measure of output per hour worked-- grew by an annualized 5.2 percent in the final three months of 2001, up from a previous estimate of 3.5 percent, the department said. For all of 2001, productivity grew by 1.9 percent, down from 3.3 percent in 2000 and 2.6 percent in the late 1990s, but still regarded by economists as an impressive performance in a year marked by a downturn. (Wall Street Journal, page A2) American productivity increased at an annual rate of 5.2 percent in the October-December quarter, the Labor Department reported. That compares with the 3.5 percent pace previously reported and was higher than Wall Street estimates of 4.5 percent (The New York Times, page C4)
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