While February was expected to match the January payrolls number at best, the February payrolls print was a blockbuster, blowing expectations out of the water with 313K jobs added, over 785K according to the Household Survey, and a record 1 million full and part-time jobs.
So which sectors were responsible for the surge in February employment? The key highlights: virtually every industry added jobs in February, with a particular focus on construction workers, which added a whopping 61K jobs in February…
- Construction: +61K
- Durable Goods: +32K
- Retail: +50K (Big Building Materials and Department Store non-firing)
- Professional Services: +50K (solid temp workers of +27K)
- Government: +26K (Schools +27K)
… with the exception of information, which saw a drop of 12K jobs.
Some other notable changes:
- Manufacturing: +31K
- Healthcare: +9K
- Mining: +9K
- Financial Activities: +28K
Commenting on the data, SouthBay research noted the following:
- Construction: Much higher than expected. Homebuilders are hiring and the bottlenecks I saw did not show up in BLS data
- Manufacturing: Higher than expected. My data shows demand is strong but more moderate
- Financial: Higher than expected. More lending and sales agents
What was also quite notable was the sharp, +50,300 jump in retail jobs, which according to the BLS, have wiped out the doldrums from the recent bricks and mortar collapse, and are back to record high.
Southbay’s summary: “Broad strength. Notable strength in the supply chain (manufacturing, transportation) and consumer (home construction, Lending, Retail, Leisure & Hospitality)“
Finally, as Bloomberg shows, below are the industries with the highest and lowest rates of employment growth for the most recent month: monthly growth rates are shown for the prior year.
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