ECONOMY/FEDERAL RESERVE/JOBS/LABOR: “Strong hiring is drawing people into the U.S. labor market, a healthy mix that suggests the economy can run strong without overheating and forcing the Federal Reserve to curb growth with aggressive interest-rate increases. Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 313,000 last month, the strongest monthly gain since July 2016, the Labor Department said Friday.
More than 800,000 Americans joined the labor force in February, according to the report, most bypassing unemployment and jumping straight into jobs. It was the largest one-month increase in the labor pool since 1983, outside months that included one-time Census hiring.
A growing supply of labor, in turn, helped keep the unemployment rate from falling further. It held at 4.1% in February, its lowest level since December 2000, for the fifth straight month. Low unemployment, in theory, creates wage and inflation pressure as firms compete for scarcer labor.”
-Eric Morath and Sharon Nunn, “U.S. Employers Added 313,000 Jobs in February,” The Wall Street Journal online, Mar. 9, 2018 12:03pm