February’s job numbers are in, and the economy has continued chugging along uninterrupted, despite the return of some volatility in the stock market last month.
While economists projected 200,000 workers to be added the payrolls in February, there were 313,000 jobs created, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.1 percent. The unemployment rate would’ve fallen to 4 percent if it weren’t for the fact that more workers were drawn into the labor force, boosting the labor force participation rate by 0.3 percent compared to the prior month.
As Breitbart’s John Carney reminds us, “Earlier reports were revised upward. December’s jobs numbers went from 160,000 to 175,000. January’s rose from 200,000 to 239,000.” Because of that, if February’s numbers are revised, it’s more likely that they’ll be revised upwards.
The black unemployment rate has also almost fallen to an historic low again. As the Washington Examiner reported,
The unemployment rate for black Americans fell back down to an historic low in February, after spiking up in January.
Just 6.9 percent of black adults were unemployed in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the second-lowest such ratio since the agency has been keeping track.
The low mark was set in December, at 6.8 percent. Then, the rate spiked to 7.7 percent, but that increase proved short-lived.
When the black jobless rate hit the record low in January, though, the NAACP gave credit to the long-running recovery that began under former President Barack Obama, rather than to Trump specifically, and noted that blacks still suffer much higher rates of unemployment than whites.
While blacks are suffering higher rates of unemployment than whites, that gap is shrinking. While Obama and other liberals would likely want to attribute the gap in employment rates across races to racism, that wouldn’t explain why the white unemployment rate was higher than the black unemployment rate at the turn of the 20th century up until the early 1930s – a time when there was obviously much more racism in American society.
Also, did anyone else notice that Obama has finally stopped attributing the dismal economic performance under his administration to George W. Bush? I guess things needed to really start turning around before he did that.
Are you thrilled about these jobs numbers? Tell us your thoughts below!
