The better than expected jobs numbers

Bloomberg:
America’s labor market might not be as great yet as President Donald Trump wants, but by almost any measure, it’s getting better.

Employers added an above-forecast 235,000 positions in February, while measures of joblessness and underemployment improved, the Labor Department’s monthly report showed on Friday. Wage growth picked up and the share of prime-age Americans in the labor force rose to the highest since 2011, suggesting the economy’s strength is drawing people off the sidelines.

While some of last month’s labor-market gains can be chalked up to unseasonably warm weather, particularly in construction, the figures are still solid and effectively seal a Federal Reserve interest-rate increase next week. Analysts expect wage gains to gradually accelerate further, which will underpin consumer spending, the principal driver of economic growth, amid a first quarter that’s looking tepid.

“If you dig a bit deeper, there are three strong reasons for optimism: in the weather-adjusted data, in the wage growth and in the unemployment and participation rate,” said Gregory Daco, head of U.S. macroeconomics at Oxford Economics in New York.

Daco estimated that “weather-sensitive sectors” added about 75,000 jobs in February. Construction jobs rose by 58,000, the strongest gain in almost a decade, and followed a 40,000 increase in January.
...
Predictions by liberal economists appear to have been way off not only on the jobs figure but also their market numbers.  I think part of the boost came from small business expansion as a result of optimism based on Trump policies and deregulation efforts.  The Obama control freak regulations have been a drag on the economy for some time.

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