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Forex Trading Reviews & News 
By: Rab Jafri
The unemployment rate in the U.S held at 9.7% and payrolls fell less than forecasted in February, indicating that the U.S labor market is stabilizing. Payrolls were expected to drop by 68,000 and the jobless rate was projected to increase to 9.8% according to Bloomberg estimates.
The economy needs employment growth to sustain a recovery from a recession that has cost 8.4 million jobs since December 2007. The bleeding seems to be easing, however the data could have serious revisions going forward since extreme weather in different part of the country may have affected payroll employment and hours.
Non Farm Payrolls since December of 2007
Factory payrolls increased for the second straight month by 1K, after an upward revision of 20K in the prior month. The median forecast by economist projected a drop of 15,000. Additionally, Average weekly Hours, a gauge of labor utilization, increased to 33.8, Economist forecasted 33.8.
Going forward, the NFP should be closed watched as the Census Bureau indicated that it will hire 1.15 million workers in the first half of the year to conduct population count that takes place every 10 years. This could have an adverse affect on payroll figures in April through June, when the bulk of the hiring will take place, and will then be subtract from the job count the following months after the work is done.
The data should be taken with a grain of salt, the bureau of labor statistics (BLS) acknowledged that severe weather in parts of the country may have altered the data, at the same time mentioned, “it is not possible to quantify precisely the net impact of the winter storms on these measures”.
