The total unemployment figure is still very high

A net increase of 379,000 jobs took place last month. This increase in employment was mainly due to growth in the hospitality and leisure sectors, where companies in some parts of the country re-recruited staff thanks to loosening of lockdowns.

Job growth accelerated in February, with 166,000 jobs added a month earlier. The US Department of Labor adjusted that figure for January significantly, as previously only 49,000 jobs were reported.

Last month’s growth was also much stronger than economists expected. They counted on an average of 200,000 new jobs.

Researchers from the US Department of Labor point out in their monthly jobs report that unemployment is still high. A total of 10 million Americans were not in paid employment in February, while they were looking for it, which amounts to an unemployment rate of 6.2 percent. That was far more than the 5.7 million unemployed in the US exactly one year earlier, just before the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

Compared to the situation before the coronavirus crisis, there are still 9.5 million less paid jobs in the world’s largest economy. The increase in the number of jobs in food and drink establishments and leisure activities with the promotion of vaccination campaigns can also be explained by the hard blows that corona has suffered in these sectors. In one year, 3.5 million American jobs have been lost here, reducing employment in these sectors by more than a fifth.

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