Job Market Continues to Show Signs of Struggle

The U.S. job market cut 92,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate went back up to 4.4%, “a sign that the job market continues to struggle across a broad range of sectors,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

The employment numbers, reported Friday by the Labor Department, fell far short of January’s gain of 126,000 jobs.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said the economy remained strong. He attributed the February downturn to one-offs, including a change in how the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics accounts for businesses opening and closing, WSJ wrote.

“We had a surprisingly positive one last month and a surprisingly negative one this one. But on average, it’s about what we expect to be seeing,” Hassett said in a CNBC interview.

The job losses were widespread.

According to the Associated Press, construction companies cut 11,000 jobs last month, likely due to the frigid weather in most of the country. And healthcare firms cut 28,000 jobs after a four-week strike by more than 30,000 nurses and other frontline workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Hawaii. Healthcare had been one of the job market’s strong points.

Additionally, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week was unchanged from the week before, a sign that layoffs remain at historically low levels, reported AP.

The Labor Department said U.S. filings for jobless aid for the week ending February 28 matched the previous week’s 213,000.

“While weekly layoffs have remained in a historically low range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years, a number of high-profile companies have announced job cuts recently, including UPS, Amazon, Dow and the Washington Post in recent weeks,” wrote AP.