The latest United States job numbers are in and they are huge, seeing the economy adding 298,000 new jobs in February alone! This has massively blown out the market expectations of 190,000.
Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute had the following to say;
“February proved to be an incredibly strong month for employment with increases we have not seen in years.”
So what does this mean? For years we have seen job reports such as these coming in, only to be disheartened by the fact that the jobs added were nothing to be celebrated at all, as they were low-paying jobs replacing high-paying, skilled jobs.
This report is a complete reversal of that hollowing-out trend. What is most remarkable about this massive surge in job creation is the fact that it includes a large quantity of high-quality, skilled jobs from the manufacturing, construction and mining sectors, NOT just low-paying service jobs, as we have seen in the past.
Presidents Trump’s pledge to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure is being accredited as the predominant reason for this increase in hiring, as companies are experiencing new highs in confidence levels, and feel positive about the economy going forward. This is something that we have not seen since the beginning of the 2008 economic crisis.
Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, agreed with this assessment;
“Confidence is playing a large role. Businesses are anticipating a lot of good stuff — tax cuts, less regulation. They are hiring more aggressively.”
What is even more heartening is the trend that is now being formed in confidence, as this record number comes after a huge increase in January, which saw 261,000 jobs added – a massive number by itself.
Even more positive is the fact that job creation is evenly distributed across the board, with small to large business adding almost equal numbers. This proves that this is a market-wide phenomenon and not simply a one-off for a specific sector.
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