March 7, 2025
The February jobs report is out. And economists say it’s solid.
Employers added 151,000 jobs in the month of February but the unemployment rate also ticked up just a little bit. This is really the first full accounting of how the jobs market is reacting to the initial stages of President Trump’s second term.
Now – before I tell you about what’s really in this report which you do need to understand — I want to say something to you. Yes, you.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics which is the government agency that puts together this report every month — is the exact same organization that collected this same jobs data during the Biden administration. This organization has collected that data the exact same way for decades. Those are the facts. But there has been a lot of talk in my comment sections over the last few years saying these numbers were fake and this organization was just lying on behalf of President Biden. I told you then and I’m going to tell you now. The numbers are the numbers. Just like the facts are the facts. You can’t like the numbers when you think they’re good for you and say they’re fake when you think they’re bad for you. That’s giving hypocrisy, it’s giving double standard it’s giving cognitive dissonance. Look – it’s ok to have good or bad feelings about these things. That’s not what I’m talking about. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. But what you’re not entitled to is claiming something is fake just because you don’t like it. If you find yourself doing that – I did a whole TEDTalk that you should definitely go watch. It will help you correct that behavior. Ok…now that you understand those basics, here’s what you need to know about today’s report and what it means.
This report marks the 50th straight month of job growth in this country. Employers have been adding jobs since January of 2021. That’s really solid. The report also found, average wages in February were up 4% from a year ago. Wage gains have been outpacing inflation for nearly two years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In February of 2025 –the job sector that saw the biggest gains was health care — which added 52,000 jobs, followed by financial services which added 21,000 jobs and transportation and warehousing which added 18,000 jobs.
But we also saw the unemployment rate tick up. Unemployment was 4% in January but in February it went up to 4.1%. But a word of caution here. Yes – this report is from February but because of the Bureau of Labor Statistics data collection method – which is as I just said has been the same for decades – this report does not fully capture all the layoffs that happened in February from the private sector or in the government sector. That means –this report does not fully capture all the doge government staffing cuts. We’ll probably get a better accounting of what happened in February and march in the April jobs report.
So even without a full accounting of the DOGE cuts – this BLS reports found 10,000 government jobs were lost in the month of February. We know the Trump administration is on a mission to shrink the federal government workforce even more so expect this number to spike up in the next few reports. In the private sector – the report found 15,000 jobs were lost in the food and beverage industry and 16,000 jobs were lost in leisure and hospitality.
There was one other number that I’m going to be keeping an eye on and you should too. The number of people working part time for economic reasons. That number increased by 460,000. That means nearly 5-million (4.9 million) Americans in February were working a part time job because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. The highest level since the pandemic.
Read the February jobs report here.
