The February jobs report came in hotter than expected, with 275,000 jobs added to the economy. Yahoo Finance reporters Anjalee Khemlani, Dani Romero, and Brooke DiPalma joined the Live Show to break down the employment gains across various sectors, including healthcare, construction, and hospitality and leisure.
Khemlani delves into the healthcare sector, highlighting the addition of 67,000 jobs. She notes that hospital jobs rose from last month, driven by physician and hospital staffing shortages. Following the pandemic, the need for more healthcare professionals is a gap that continues to widen.
Romero discusses the construction sector, where 23,000 jobs were added, in line with analyst estimates. She emphasizes that non-residential construction jobs, responsible for highway building and road maintenance, grew by over 12,000 jobs thanks to increased government spending. While there has been an increase in single-family housing projects, residential construction added only 200 jobs.
DiPalma focuses on the hospitality and leisure sector, which saw the second-largest gain with 58,000 jobs added. She notes that restaurants and bars recorded the most significant job gains, followed by accommodation services like hotels.
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Editor's note: This article was written by Angel Smith
Video Transcript
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SEANA SMITH: The February jobs report coming out that 275,000 jobs were added to the US economy, unemployment ticking higher to 3.9% average hourly earnings, up on a year-over-year basis to 4.3%. We also got some revisions to the prior two months.
December gain was revised down to 290,000 from 333,000, and also going a step further here, slower from a downwardly revised gain of 229,000 in January. Here's the revisions for the prior two months also factoring in to the move that we're seeing in the futures market today. Well, let's break it down by sector.
We've got Yahoo Finance's Anjalee Khemlani, Dani Romero, and Brooke DiPalma for a roundup of the sectors. Anjalee, let's start with you.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Of course. Health care, we've seen a little bit of gains, of course, but softer than last month. To your point, Seana, earlier, you were talking about softness that you see in the industry, and we're seeing that this in here as well. 67,000 jobs added above the average for the last 12 months, which was 58,000, but still an increase. Last month was 70,000.
And we've seen some shifts in sort of where those jobs are coming in. For example, ambulatory, significant boost last month, now just at 28,000. Meanwhile, hospitals increased from last month. 20,000 jobs added there.
And this is all part of what we see as physician shortage and hospital shortage problems. You've seen it. If you've ever been to a hospital in the last few months, you know that this has been happening. And so these numbers are matching what you've seen, which is high churn and the need for more professionals as the industry struggles to fill these roles.
Meanwhile, we also saw a little bit of a dip in nursing homes. But we did see a jump last month, so that could be the balancing out there. But what's interesting about these numbers is they tell the story of how much churn and how much uncertainty is going on in the health industry, telehealth, for example, if you've seen in the last several years.
We know during the pandemic, huge spikes in those numbers. And that has also softened, telling another story about what the shifts are in where people are getting services and where the demand is for those services as well. You can see on the screen that decrease in the last couple of years.
We also know that, for example, players like Amazon and CVS hiring in the ambulatory or outpatient sort of setting with primary care and the like. So really, it's going to be interesting to see how this trend follows through the year as these shifts in demand of services happen. Meanwhile, I know we've got Dani Romero standing by with construction. Dani, what have you got?
DANI ROMERO: There were no surprises in the construction sector jobs added in this area. Gained about 23,000 in February, in line with some analysts' expectations that were expecting between 20,000 and 24,000 jobs added. Remember, construction is divided into two buckets. We have nonresidential and residential.
And if we take a look at the nonresidential job numbers last month, that really grew by 4,300. Under that umbrella, we have the heavy and civil engineering construction jobs. And remember, those jobs build our highways, our roads, our streets, our dams, our water supply. And so that grew by 12,500.
And the reason behind the strength there really is an increase in government spending and the Infrastructure Act. That will still continue to be really a strong area as more money will be allocated to those types of jobs. Now, shifting over to residential building construction jobs, that lost a little bit of steam. Only added 200 jobs there.
Some economists are really expecting that that will increase throughout the year due to the fact that there has been an increase in single-family housing projects that are in the works. And one last point really is over the last year, wages for construction has actually increased by $2 an hour. So that really is an opportunity and this continues to really be an opportunity in the labor market. But let's go to hospitality and leisure with Brooke DiPalma. Brooke.
BROOKE DIPALMA: Good morning, Dani. That's right. Leisure and hospitality saw the second largest gain last quarter out of all the sectors that this report breaks down. Now, leisure and hospitality did add 58,000 jobs, reaching a grand total of 16.8 million overall jobs there. Restaurant and bars adding the most last month, coming in at adding 41,600 jobs, reaching a grand total within that sector of roughly 12.3 million jobs.
Now, accommodation-- think hospitality. Think hotels-- they added nearly 3,000 jobs last month, approximately reaching 1.9 million jobs. And across the board, we saw leisure and hospitality really do well. Of course, this experiential economy has been booming, especially as we make way into 2024.
That narrative somewhat holding on after such a huge influx last year. So we saw the sector added jobs at entertainment places, at museums, at amusement parks. And we'll also be keeping a closer eye on that wage growth that we see across the category.
Of course, in January, wages increased across 22 states across the US. And I know that later on today, we'll be hearing more about that increase in wage growth coming in California for fast food joints in particular. Brad, back to you.
BRAD SMITH: All right. Thank you so much, Anjalee, Dani, Brooke. We appreciate the breakdowns there sector by sector.
