(Finance) – In February, the growth of jobs in United States slows down compared to January (when it was 504,000), but remains high enough to keep the pressure on Federal Reserve to change your mind about higher interest rate hikes. I am 311,000 jobs created last month, more than the 225,000 forecast by economists.
despite thesalary increase has shown signs of cooling – +0.2% since January, just below the previous monthly increase in average hourly wages and lower than expected while on an annual basis it is 4.6% higher – analysts forecast that at the meeting March Fed’s hawkish tone will not be abandoned. The February report is one of the most significant data releases ahead of the upcoming central bank meeting on March 21-22 and the Fed chair, Jay Powellhas already said in congressional hearings this week that it will look into those figures – as well as those on inflation And retail sales – to decide whether to raise rates further.
Despite February’s gains, the unemployment rate it rose to 3.6%, although it remains close to the multi-decade low. The labor force participation rate, which tracks the share of Americans who are employed or looking for work, rose to 62.5%.
Meanwhile i futures on US equities, ei rose treasury bonds they extended their gains after the data was released. There reaction market sentiment suggested that investors found cause for optimism in higher unemployment numbers and lower-than-expected wage growth. However, uncertainty remains and more signals are expected from the data before the Fed meeting in March. The trend of swap later data on the US labor market suggests instead that the Federal Reserve will probably not raise interest rates by 0.50% in March as initially expected and suggest a cut in the cost of money by 25 basis points by the end of the year.
For the president of the United States, Joe Biden, the data on the labor market “are good” and show how “my economic plan works”. “We still have work to do to bring inflation down further,” she added, stressing however that the US economy is “moving in the right direction.” Biden also spoke about the intentions of the match republican and some threats Of default which would be triggered in case of failure to increase the debt ceiling. For the American president this is the greatest “threat” to the American economy. Joe Biden then said he was optimistic about the next inflation figure, expected next week
(Photo: Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash )