February Unemployment Rate Drops

WASHINGTON — Nonfarm payroll employment grew by 243,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.8 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported.

Job gains occurred in construction, financial activities, health care, and several other industries.

Both the number of unemployed persons, 7.2 million, and the unemployment rate, 4.8 percent, were little changed in February. A year earlier, the number of unemployed was 8.0 million, and the jobless rate was 5.4 percent.

Following a decline in January, the unemployment rate for adult men edged up to 4.2 percent in February. The jobless rates for the other major worker groups--adult women (4.3 percent), teenagers (15.4 percent), whites (4.1 percent), blacks (9.3 percent), and Hispanics (5.5 percent)--showed little or no change over the month. The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.2 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

After declining in January, the number of unemployed persons who had been without a job for 27 weeks or longer returned to its December level of 1.4 million. These long-term unemployed accounted for 19.0 percent of total unemployment in February, down slightly from a year earlier.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor