PARIS (Reuters) – The American economy showed an unexpected acceleration in job creation in February but the figure for January was sharply revised, unemployment rose slightly and wage growth slowed, the department’s monthly report shows of Labor published Friday.
This report lists 275,000 non-agricultural jobs created last month in the United States, compared to 229,000 (revised from 353,000) in January, while economists polled by Reuters forecast an average of only 200,000.
The unemployment rate rose to 3.9% in February compared to 3.7% the previous month. The Reuters forecast was also 3.7%.
The increase in average hourly wages slowed to 0.1% in February, after +0.6% in January, against a consensus of +0.3%. On an annual basis, its progression reached 4.3% after +4.5% the previous month and a consensus of 4.4%.
On Wall Street, futures contracts on the main indices varied slightly after the publication of this indicator, going green for two of them while three were all indicated in negative territory.
They now suggest an opening down 0.13% for the Dow Jones, but up 0.08% for the Standard & Poor’s 500 and 0.03% for the Nasdaq.
The yield on ten-year Treasuries fell by almost four basis points, to 4.0537% and the dollar fell by 0.32% against a basket of reference currencies.
“The US jobs report released today is undeniably weak and should convince markets that the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate cut is imminent,” comments Matthew Ryan, head of strategy at Ebury.
“If the number of jobs created in February surprised upwards by around 75,000, this is more than offset by the sharp downward revision of 124,000 in the number of jobs created in January,” he adds. he.
(Written by Claude Chendjou, edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse and Blandine Hénault)
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