379,000 US Jobs Added In February Surpass Economist Expectations

Updated September 7, 2021

Although you're not likely to find many people who were sad to see 2020 go, it's also unlikely that many of us expected 2021 to magically get better overnight.

And while there may be aspects of this year that we have to look forward to, many of us find ourselves in roughly the same situations we were in last year. That not only takes into account the millions of Americans who wait for their chance to receive a COVID-19 vaccine but also the millions who remain wondering how they will survive financially.

But while the outlook seemed grim at the start of the year, we may be seeing a new reason to be hopeful.

Once the dust had settled on January, the job numbers weren't terribly encouraging at first.

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As NBC News reported, initial reviews of the month saw 49,000 new jobs added, which fell a little short of the 50,000 economists expected.

And that's not even factoring in the millions of Americans who gave up on looking for work over the last year.

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Other groups who NBC News reported as not represented by the 6.3% unemployment rate were the 6 million Americans who were counted as securing part-time work, but not the full-time work they needed. Another 7 million who were out of the labor force but wanted to work also weren't counted as officially unemployed.

However, further analysis of America's employment rates in 2021 suggest that the situation wasn't as dire as it seemed.

According to CNN Business, January's numbers were revised and showed that 166,000 jobs were actually added that month.

Better yet, February saw the addition of 379,000 new jobs, which the outlet described as "far more than economists had expected."

This change also led the unemployment rate inch down to 6.2%. While that may not seem like a significant change, the percentage wasn't expected to change at all during February.

The lion's share of these new positions seem to come from the leisure and hospitality industries, which added 355,000 jobs last month.

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As CNN Business reported, this change came alongside a rolling back of restrictions imposed in the wake of the pandemic's emergence and largely constituted the return of lost jobs rather than the creation of new ones.

But while this news is encouraging, it still only constitutes a small step on the path the country has yet to travel.

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According to CNN Business, the nation is still trailing 9.5 million fewer jobs than February of last year and labor force participation remains stagnant at 61.4% — a low the United States hasn't seen since the 1970s.

There's also the problem that what recovery does exist seems to be affecting some Americans differently than others. While white-collar workers and stock market investors have seen their finances improve, workers earning lower wages are finding the struggle to pay for basic necessities as precarious as ever.

As BMO senior economist Sal Guatieri said, even the good economic news at this point still leaves us with "a lot of wood to chop."

h/t: NBC News, CNN Business

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