The United States added 151,000 jobs in February despite nearly 10,000 federal workers losing their positions, a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates.
In Friday's report, the BLS reported a slight increase in the unemployment rate from 4% in January to 4.1% in February.
The report was relatively unremarkable, as thousands of government workers lost their jobs in February. At least in President Donald Trump's first full month in office, there were few noticeable changes in the overall U.S. workforce.
University of Michigan professor of economics Justin Wolfers says overall, the report shows the economy is in a good place, but he warned about how the Trump administration's current policies could impact the future.
"The big picture is that this is a healthy economy in a good place with good momentum, with one big but," Wolfer said. "The but is no one knows what's going to happen to economic policy. There's enormous fear it will be driven in all sorts of unproductive ways."
Wolfers noted the report comes amid a roller-coaster of a week for Wall Street, amid investor jitters about Trump's tariffs. Still, the White House claimed the administration's actions are working.
"I think it's a fantastic report," said Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council. "It's showing exactly what President Trump intends to do. He intends to reduce government spending to get rid of wasteful government jobs and to create manufacturing jobs, and that's what you see."
The report shows the economy added 10,000 manufacturing jobs last month and cut as many federal government jobs, the most since June of 2022.
The U.S. government has been in the midst of shrinking its workforce after President Trump took office in January. But because of when the data was collected, the report doesn't reflect the true impact of those efforts.
A separate report from outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. showed more than 62,000 federal job cuts in February. Those will be reflected more in next month's jobs report.
Still, Wolfers says they may not make a major dent on the economy's bottom line.
"The federal workforce is remarkably small," Wolfers said. "So the total cuts that are coming are relatively small. Most of those cuts haven't come through yet, and so we will expect some contribution over the next few months, but not enough to really meaningfully move the bottom line.
On average, the U.S. has added 168,000 jobs per month in the last year. In the last decade, the U.S. typically added 1.9 million jobs per year, or 160,000 workers per month. The unemployment rate has generally held steady over the last two years. The unemployment rate was around 4% throughout all of 2023.
Besides a drop in government employment, there was a 15,000-job decline in the food and beverage industry, which was mostly attributed to strikes.
Making up for losses in the government and food and beverage sectors, the health care industry added 52,000 jobs in February, while the financial activities sector added 21,000 positions.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, President Trump boasted about the 10,000-job increase in the manufacturing industry, which saw a slight decline in 2024.
"During the first full month in office, we've not only stopped the manufacturing collapse, but we've begun to rapidly reverse it and get major gains," President Trump said.
