The Jobs Report – February 2022

Highlight

The economy added 678K jobs in February, better than the consensus estimate of 423K

What you need to know:

1. The private sector added 654K jobs with widespread gains throughout most parts of the economy.
2. Goods-producing sectors added 105K jobs in February, beating January’s 24K gain, with construction and manufacturing the largest contributors.
3. The services sector added 549K jobs with Leisure and Hospitality leading the way with 179K jobs.
4. Average hourly earnings increased by 5.1% for the past 12 months despite being little changed from January to February.
5. In February, 1.2 million persons were prevented from looking for work because of the pandemic, a sharp decrease from 1.8 million in January.
6. In our view, the economy continues to generate solid job and wage gains as the Omicron variant subsides.