The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released its report on employment this morning, where it has cited 36,000 U.S. jobs were lost in the month of February. The overall unemployment rate remains at 9.7%, virtually unchanged from January.
This is better than the 9.9% unemployment some had expected. Many analysts considered factoring in the winter storms that affected much of the country in the past month, but the BLS report was quoted as saying, “it is not possible to quantify precisely the net impact of the winter storms on these measures.”
Still, 36,000 jobs lost is quite a few more than ADP’s (ADP) report earlier this week, which saw 20,000 jobs lost in the last month. Then again, considering the past year and a half overall, these month-to-month job losses are quite slim, and continue to indicate that the U.S. unemployment rate has leveled off.
Zacks Chief Strategist Dirk van Dijk, CFA will flesh out this report in far greater detail. But at first blush, the BLS report appears to be mildly positive.
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