Rate hike likely after robust jobs report

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

A second-straight month of robust hiring pointed Friday to a U.S. economy healthy enough for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next week and to signal the likelihood of additional rate hikes ahead.

U.S. employers added 235,000 jobs in February, average paychecks rose and the unemployment rate dipped to a low 4.7 percent from 4.8 percent, the Labor Department said.

February’s jobs report was the first to cover a full month under President Donald Trump. During the presidential campaign, Trump had cast doubt on the validity of the government’s jobs data, calling the unemployment rate a “hoax.”

But just minutes after the report was released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, Trump retweeted a news report touting the job growth.

Later in the day, his spokesman, Sean Spicer, quoted Trump as saying of the jobs reports: “They may have been phony in the past, but they are very real now,” a comment that incited laughter, including from Spicer himself, during a press briefing.

The February report showed that more people began looking for jobs, an encouraging sign that they’ve grown confident about their prospects. Hiring was strong enough to absorb those new job seekers as well as some of the previously unemployed.

“It’s hard to find much to dislike in the February jobs report,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase.