A month ago, the president said that business should use rising revenue to invest in jobs. It was good advice and it appears that corporations are taking it.
Last month companies created 222,000 jobs in manufacturing, construction, transportation, health care and hospitality. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.9 percent and economists are predicting strong hiring all year. The good news was noted by both Republicans and Democrats.
“Our economy’s now added 1.5 million private-sector jobs over the last year, and that’s progress,” the president said last week in Miami.
“The improvement seen in this report is a credit to the hard work of the American people and their success in stopping the tax hikes that were due to hit our economy on January 1,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said.
Despite the good news, the overall employment picture can’t yet be called healthy. The number of unemployed workers now stands at 13.7 million, with about 6 million who have been unemployed for longer than six months. If the job market continues to improve at its present slow pace, full employment is still many years away.
But economists are now hopeful that the rising economic tide will strengthen consumer spending, leading to higher corporate profits and more hiring.
The outlook could be complicated by inflation or continued rise of oil prices. But the February report seems to confirm that employment numbers reflect the overall trend toward economic recovery.
As the president’s chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, put it: “This is a very solid report.”
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