From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 236,000 in February, and the
unemployment rate edged down to 7.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business
services, construction, and health care.Household Survey Data
The unemployment rate edged down to 7.7 percent in February but has shown
little movement, on net, since September 2012. The number of unemployed
persons, at 12.0 million, also edged lower in February. […]In February, 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force,
the same as a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These
individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work,
and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not
counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks
preceding the survey.Establishment Survey Data
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 236,000 in February, with
job gains in professional and business services, construction, and health
care. In the prior 3 months, employment had risen by an average of 195,000
per month.Professional and business services added 73,000 jobs in February; employment
in the industry had changed little (+16,000) in January. In February,
employment in administrative and support services, which includes employment
services and services to buildings, rose by 44,000. Accounting and
bookkeeping services added 11,000 jobs, and growth continued in computer
systems design and in management and technical consulting services.In February, employment in construction increased by 48,000. Since September,
construction employment has risen by 151,000. […]
The unemployment rate is computed using data from the survey of households; the number of payroll jobs is estimated from survey of payroll establishments.
We still have very high unemployment and many Americans still face daily struggles to find work or have simply given up looking, but this is a fairly encouraging report. We added jobs in February at about twice the pace necessary to keep up with population growth.
The private sector actually added 246,000 jobs. Another 10,000 jobs were lost in government.
U-6 unemployment, which includes “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force,” fell slightly to 14.3 percent. It was 15.6 percent in February 2012.
A couple graphs: