Joint Economic Committee (JEC)

Senator Sam Brownback

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January Employment and
Unemployment:  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report
today on employment and unemployment for February (BLS pdf
summary available at title="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf">http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
).

Highlights of
the report:

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Symbol'>·                   
Non-farm payroll employment increased by 97,000
new jobs in February, following increases of 226,000 in December and 146,000 in
January.  

• January marks the 42^nd consecutive month
  with payroll job gains. 




• Close to 7.6 million new payroll jobs have been
  created in that period.


• Over the year ending in February, payroll
  employment grew by 2 million.




• Since the enactment of tax relief in
  2003 (i.e., from June 2003 through February 2007), monthly payroll job
  gains have averaged a healthy 169,000.  In contrast, average monthly
  payroll job losses between the beginning of 2001 and enactment of
  pro-growth tax relief were -88,000.

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Symbol'>·                   
The unemployment rate edged down to 4.5% in
February, from 4.6% in January.

• The unemployment rate has ranged
  from 4.4% to 4.6% for the last six months.


• The unemployment rate remains well
  below the recent peak of 6.3% in June 2003.

Jeffrey
Wrase

Chief Economist, Senate Republicans

Joint Economic
Committee

H-805 w:st="on">Hart Senate
Office Buildingstyle='color:black'>

(202) 224-2335style='color:black'>

href="mailto:jeff_wrase@jec.senate.gov" title="mailto:jeff_wrase@jec.senate.gov">jeff_wrase@jec.senate.gov