U.S. employers added 678,000 jobs in February as the Omicron-fuelled COVID-19 surge fades, with the unemployment rate slightly dropping to 3.8 percent, the U.S. Labor Department reported on Friday.
Job growth was widespread, led by gains in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, health care, and construction, according to the report released by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
"Surprisingly strong job gains in February but also surprisingly weak nominal wage gains," Jason Furman, former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on Twitter.
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls, at 31.58 U.S. dollars in February, were "little changed" over the month, after large increases in recent months, the BLS report showed.
Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 5.1 percent. Meanwhile, recent data from the Commerce Department showed that personal consumption expenditures (PCE), the U.S. Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, rose 6.1 percent annually in January, the fastest annual pace in four decades.
Persistently high inflation and a tight job market have prompted the Federal Reserve to signal in January that it was ready to begin a series of interest-rate hikes in March as it exited from the ultra-loose monetary policy enacted at the start of the pandemic.
Two days prior to the release of the monthly employment report, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell already reaffirmed the central bank's plan to raise interest rates in the upcoming policy meeting, noting that he is inclined to support a 25-basis-point rate hike.
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