US economy shrugs off winter with rise in jobs

Posted by MarkL on March 7, 2015

Falling oil prices and a particularly harsh winter may have meant the US economy didn't quite get the lift off many were predicting last year, but the latest round of job figures helped shrug off some of the winter blues. 

February saw 295,000 new jobs added to the US economy, the 12th straight month more than 200,000 jobs had been added in a month. 

In a blogpost Jason Furman, chairman of the White House’s council of economic advisers, said: “With another strong employment report, we have now seen twelve straight months of private-sector job gains above 200,000 – the first time that has happened since 1977. Moreover, 2014 was the best year for job growth since the late 1990s and 2015 has continued at this pace.”

The unemployment level in the US is now below what it was before the Global Financial Crisis and a good deal better than it was one year ago when unemployment was at 6.7 per cent. 

US website Marketwatch.com said the latest employment numbers offered more proof the economy was likely to continue to chug along in the wake of the biggest spurt of hiring since the Clinton era. Many economists think the U.S. might achieve 3 per cent annual growth in 2015 for the first time in a decade.

“The U.S. labor market is on fire,” said Neil Dutta, head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research told Marketwatch. The website warned the continual fall in unemployment may force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in the first half of the year to prevent the economy from overheating.