Overview
- Employers cut 92,000 jobs in February and the jobless rate rose to 4.4%, missing forecasts for roughly 60,000 new jobs.
- Health care payrolls fell by about 28,000 due to a Kaiser Permanente strike, with additional losses across construction, manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, and ongoing federal workforce cuts.
- The Labor Department trimmed prior months, lowering January to 126,000 and flipping December to a 17,000 loss, after a methodology update that analysts say added roughly 70,000 to January.
- New population controls, delayed by last year’s shutdown, reset January household baselines and imply fewer than 50,000 monthly jobs are needed to hold unemployment steady.
- Markets slid on the report as oil and gasoline prices climbed with the Iran conflict, and economists expect the Fed to keep rates unchanged at its March 17–18 meeting.