If bulls were expecting a February payrolls miss, they did not get it when moments ago the BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls surged by 242K in the past month, smashing expectations of 195K, with the January and December prints both revised higher by 21K and 9K respectively. The unemployment rate at 4.9% printed unchanged from the prior month and as expected.
However, the one big surprised was that once again, the wage growth was not only not there, but with a -0.1% decline after the January minimum wage hike induced bounce, posted a drop of -0.1%, which was the first drop since December 2014.
Worse, the average weekly earnings tumbled from $878.15 to $872.04, which rising just 1.7% Y/Y, was the weakest increase since February 2014.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1WZjh0b Tyler Durden