Large increase in jobs for the US

President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The Private sector of the United States can show the largest growth in new appointments for three years. There were 298,000 new jobs created in February, according to newly released figures.

US companies created 298,000 new jobs in February, on top of 261,000 new jobs in January. One has to go three years back in time to find a similar increase, according to statistics from the payroll agency ADP (Automatic Data Processing).

Particularly the growth is strong in the construction industry, with 66,000 new jobs in February, the largest increase in eleven years.

Unusually warm weather for most of the year is highlighted as a possible contributing factor, but overall optimism in corporate America seems to be the deciding factor for the job growth last month.

ADP’s figures are covering the private sector only and are therefore likely to differ from the governments. Analysts expect that the government’s own figures, presented Friday, will show an increase of around 186,000 jobs in February, according to figures obtained by FactSet.

The same day as the ADP figures were revealed,  figures from the Labour Department shows a decrease in US workers’ productivity increase.

In the last quarter of last year, productivity increased by 1.3 percent compared to the same period in 2015, down from a 3.3 percent increase in the previous quarter.

For the year as a whole productivity rose by 0.2 percent -, the slowest increase since 2011 when it increased by a mere 0.1 percent.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today