Why the February jobs report is far, far better than it looks

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says 175,000 new jobs were added in February, well above Wall Street's consensus estimate of 149,000.

162,000 of those hires were to private payrolls, while government took on 13,000 new employees.

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The huge story, though, is that this stronger job growth (compared, at least, to December and January) came in spite of a mammoth 601,000 employed workers being out of work due to the weather. That number was far higher than the 273,000 out of work in December due to the weather, and the 262,000 in January. Had the number of people out of work in February due to the weather been comparable to the January and December ones, we would have seen job growth of closer to 500,000 this month!

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John Aziz is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate editor at Pieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and Noahpinion.

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