BLS: Payrolls Crater in Latest Jobs Report

The U.S. labor market took an unexpected step backward in February, shedding 92,000 non-farm payroll jobs after a modest 126,000 gain in January, according to Friday’s Employment Situation release. Headline unemployment barely budged at 4.4 percent, yet 7.6 million Americans remain officially out of work and an increasing share of them are looking for jobs far longer than before. At the same time, spot gold crossed $5,162 per ounce, suggesting investors are hedging against what might be more than a one-month wobble in the economy.

Beneath the topline numbers, several fault lines are widening. Long-term unemployment jumped to 1.9 million—one in every four jobless workers—up sharply from 1.5 million a year earlier. The labor-force participation rate held at a subdued 62.0 percent, and the employment-to-population ratio stayed at 59.3 percent, both well below their pre-pandemic marks. Revisions to prior data erased another 69,000 jobs from the record, turning December’s previously reported gain into a loss. The cumulative downticks underscore how fragile the post-lockdown rebound has become even before the Federal Reserve’s most recent round of monetary “fine-tuning” fully filters through credit markets.

Sector-specific details offer more reasons for caution. Health-care payrolls slid by 28,000, largely because a strike at physicians’ offices wiped out 37,000 positions. Information services shed 11,000 jobs, extending a year-long bleed that now averages 5,000 losses per month. Transportation and warehousing fell by 11,000, with couriers and messengers down 17,000 despite a modest bump in air transportation. Even the federal government—rarely a paragon of belt-tightening—trimmed another 10,000 jobs and is now 330,000 employees lighter than its October 2024 peak.

Wage data look firmer on the surface: average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers rose 0.4 percent to $37.32, up 3.8 percent over the past year. Production and nonsupervisory employees saw a 0.3 percent bump to $32.03. Yet with official Consumer Price Index readings still running hot —and many households reporting steeper increases for essentials—the growth in paychecks is, at best, running in place.  …