Stocks Slide After Weak February Jobs Report
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In an unexpected downturn, the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February. Plus, President Trump's new pick to head the Department of Homeland Security is a signal that the president doesn't plan to back off his signature immigration tactics.
I think that Mullen is 100% on board with Trump's immigration policies and deportation efforts. What'll be interesting to see is whether his relationships on Capitol Hill might make his job a little bit easier.
And Trump calls for Iran's, quote, unconditional surrender. It's Friday, March 6th. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal. This is the p.m. edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The Labor Department today reported that the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February. It's a significant downturn from January's gain of 126,000 jobs. And it's also worse than the 50,000 jobs the economy was expected to add last month. And one more number, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4 percent. For more on these numbers, I'm joined now by WSJ economics reporter Justin Lehart. Justin, health care jobs in particular have propped up the labor market for some time now.
In February, the health care and social assistance sector lost more than 18,000 jobs. What happened there?
Yeah, a couple of things happened. There was a strike at Kaiser Permanente, and that did knock several thousand jobs off of health care employment. Also, there was a really outsized gain in health care in January. So some of this was a give back to that. And some people think that the data may just be a little more volatile than it used to be. But, you know, overall, this is a very weak report.
What were the job loss figures reported for February?
Construction shedding jobs, manufacturing shedding jobs, information shedding jobs, leisure and hospitality shedding. I mean, it was really, you know, just not a good report at all.
The unemployment rate caught my eye because that's kind of been creeping up steadily over the past few years. What does that tell us about the strength of the labor market?
Yeah, I mean, so the unemployment rate, it went up to 4.4%. That's still relatively low. One thing that's going on here is that we don't really have like a strong sense of how many jobs the economy needs to add each month to keep unemployment rates steady anymore. And that's because with immigration restrictions, the population just isn't growing like it used to, especially the working age population. So you may just not need to create as many jobs to keep up with population growth as we did before.
The Fed has to watch the jobs market and also take into account what happens with inflation. Now, energy prices are rising with the Middle East conflict. So if we see this job market weakening, what does that mean for the Fed's next meeting later this month?
This month's Fed meeting, you wouldn't really expect to see any action on interest rates. They'd like to see more than one report to give them a direction of where things are going, right? But it does open up the possibility of more rate cuts this year.
That was WSJ economics reporter Justin Layhart. Thanks, Justin.
Thanks.
In news today about the war in the Middle East, President Trump is calling for Iran's unconditional surrender and, quote, acceptable leadership in the country. He said the U.S. and allies would then work to strengthen Iran's economy. A State Department spokesman said today that nearly 24,000 Americans have returned to the U.S. from the Middle East since the war with Iran began.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:22
2
What were the job loss figures reported for February?
2:22–7:46
3
How did the February jobs report affect the Federal Reserve's outlook?
7:46–8:32
4
Which sectors experienced job losses in February?
8:32–12:36
5
What implications does the rising unemployment rate have on the labor market?
12:36–12:52
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from WSJ What’s News
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