U.S. Added 227,000 Jobs in February

This morning the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the latest results from their national employer survey. Nonfarm payroll employment grew by a seasonally adjusted* 227,000 jobs in February, led by private-sector gains in professional and business services (+82,000 jobs); health care and social assistance (+61,000); leisure and hospitality (+41,000); manufacturing (+31,000); and mining (+7,000).

Private-sector industries that reported losses in February included construction (-13,000 jobs); other services (-6,000); and information (-1,000). The public sector dropped 6,000 jobs over the month.

The nation's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (measured by place of residence through a survey of households) was 8.3 percent in February. This figure remains unchanged from January, but is down 0.7 percentage points over the year.

Get more details in the full BLS Employment Situation Summary: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

*A quick technical note: All employment numbers used in this post are seasonally adjusted. The normal seasonal employment change between January and February would be 624,000; the actual increase totaled 851,000 jobs over the month, so there was a seasonally adjusted gain of 227,000. Check out our recent post on seasonal adjustment for more information .