The US jobless rate held steady at 8.3 per cent in February after falling for five straight months, according to the US Labour Department.
The economy created another 227,000 new jobs, topping the 200,000 mark for the third straight month, not enough to pull the unemployment rate lower but good enough to keep it at its three-year low as growth eased after 2011’s peppy fourth quarter.
The overall official number of unemployed held at 12.8 million, little changed from the previous month.
Hiring was broad-based and came entirely from the private sector as government layoffs continued around the country.
But the number of net government layoffs was also low, just 6,000, suggesting spending cuts by authorities at the federal and local level were beginning to slow as well.
Job creation numbers for the previous two months were revised higher, putting the three- month average at 245,000 net new jobs per month, sharply above the 2011 12-month average of 153,000.
In another sign of the underlying strength of the economy, the overall participation rate in the jobs market picked up to 63.9 per cent, and the employment-population ratio also rose.
Those figures underscored that the fall in the jobless rate was coming from new positions being created rather than people dropping out of the jobs market altogether, as was the case during part of 2011.
The slowdown in job creation from the previous two months was no surprise: analysts had expected a dip in the rate of economic growth after the peppy pick-up to three per cent in the fourth quarter of last year.
Economists were overall cheered by the new numbers, which though down from January, outpaced forecasts.
“US economy watchers can breathe a sigh of relief for now as employment growth exceeded expectations and the economy created enough jobs to absorb re-entrants into the labour market,” said John Ryding and Conrad DeQuadros at RDQ Economics.
“The employment gains appeared broad-based with manufacturing and business services showing particularly encouraging gains,” they said.
Meanwhile the US trade deficit rose sharply in January, forging the biggest gap since October 2008 as imports surged on the back of high oil prices, according to official data.
The trade gap grew to $52.6 billion, after an upwardly revised $50.4 billion in December, the Commerce Department reported.
The US gap in goods and services has been widening in recent months, a period of rising oil prices. Underscoring the trend was the three-month average ending in January, which rose to $50.2 billion, from $47.0 billion in the October-December period. The January trade deficit was much bigger than the $48.2 billion gap expected by most analysts.
In January, exports rose 1.4 per cent to $180.8 billion, outpaced by $233.4 billion in imports, a jump of 2.1 per cent from December.
The growth in imports was massive. According to the Commerce Department, the United States had not imported so many goods, $196.1 billion, since July 2008. The $37.3 billion in services imports was an all-time record, it said.
The US trade balance with the rest of the world has been hit by high oil prices. The world’s biggest oil-consuming country saw its petroleum trade deficit jump nine per cent in January from December, while the price of imported crude remained above $100 a barrel for the fourth consecutive month.
US exports continued to show solid performances. The Commerce Department highlighted strong numbers for services, capital goods and auto vehicles and parts.
About half of the January trade gap was the politically sensitive trade deficit with China, a source of friction between the world’s two biggest economies.
The deficit with China rose to $26.0 billion from $23.1 billion in December.
With its Nafta partners, the US gap with Canada widened mainly due to imports of Canadian oil while that with Mexico shrank.
The deficit also narrowed with the eurozone as the single-currency area grapples with a public debt crisis and sharply slowing economic growth, and with Japan still recovering from the earthquake and tsunami disaster of March 11, 2011.
Aaron Smith at Moody’s Analytics said the January trade number would likely weigh on the pace of first-quarter US gross domestic product growth.
“While the pick-up in trade flows over the last couple months is a sign of better demand growth in the US and abroad, the widening of the real deficit suggests net exports are on track to shave around a half of a percentage point from first-quarter GDP growth,” Mr Smith said.