Now for that jobs report, the US economy did
add 311,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in February beating Wall Street's
expectations of about 205,000. The unemployment rate edged up
to 3.6%, which means slightly more Americans are out
of work than economists were expecting. There was also
smaller than anticipated hourly wage gains hinting at slowing inflation
sectors including leisure and hospitality, retail trade, government
and healthcare saw the biggest job gains whereas information,
transportation and warehousing lost the most jobs. The Fed's
plan has been to watch employment numbers closely to gauge
for how long and how aggressively to hike interest rates
to cool the economy. Now all of this comes
on the back of it better than anticipated ADP private
payroll report in a major beat last month with the
us adding 517,000 jobs in January.