U.S. Reports Accelerating Job Growth
Payrolls grow by 262,000 positions in February. But the unemployment rate increases to 5.4%. By Joel Havemann Times Staff Writer
March 5, 2005 WASHINGTON - The economy generated a net 262,000 new jobs in February, one of its best showings of the Bush administration but not enough to make room for all the new job seekers, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate edged up to 5.4% from 5.2%. Most economists welcomed the news, and investors responded by driving stock prices broadly higher and bond yields down. "It's a solid report, and we can take encouragement from it," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at consulting firm Economy.com. "It indicates that times are better for the average American worker."
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A dissenting perspective came from Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington research organization. Lilly called it a sorry commentary when "unbridled enthusiasm Š is displayed for a monthly employment report that is no more than average relative to the historical rate of job growth." Lilly said the 262,000 new jobs represented growth of less than 0.2% in the number of working Americans, almost exactly the average of the last 50 years. The total number of jobs, 132.8 million, slightly exceeds the 132.5 million when Bush took office. Older workers have accounted for much of the job gain over the last year. Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said 918,000 of the jobs created over the last year went to workers over 55, while younger workers filled 892,000 of the positions. Baker noted that unemployment rates rose by 0.3 percentage point for both blacks (to 10.9%) and Latinos (to 6.4%). He said the proportion of African Americans of all ages who were working fell to 56.5%, its lowest level in nearly 10 years.
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