February Employment and Unemployment: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and unemployment for February (pdf summary available). Highlights of the report:

Unemployment Rate

• The unemployment rate edged down to 8.9% in February.  The unemployment rate was 9.0% in January and 9.4% in December. 

o   February marks first time since April of 2009 that the unemployment rate has been below 9.0%.

• The percentage of long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) edged up slightly in February to 43.9% (from 43.8% in January), but the number of long-term unemployed edged down to 6.0 million (from 6.2 million in January). 
• The labor force was essentially unchanged in February, after declining by more than 500,000 in January.  The labor force remains 1.7 million below its prior October 2008 peak and is 6.7 million below what it would have been if the labor force had continued to grow at the same rate it did from 2004 to 2007.
• There were 13.7 million unemployed persons in February, down from 13.9 million in January.

Payroll Employment

• Total non-farm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February, following gains of 63,000 in January (revised upwards from 36,000), and 152,000 in December (revised upwards from 103,000).  

o   Private sector employment rose by 222,000 while government employment fell by 30,000.

o   The largest private sector employment gains came from professional and business services (+47,000), health care (+34,000), manufacturing (+33,000), and construction (+33,000).

o   The average workweek declined was unchanged at 34.2 hours for all private nonfarm employees. 

Job Gains by Sector since the Official Start and Official End of the Recession