US Total Unemployment Falls to Lowest Level in Three Years
Saxo Bank | Mar 09, 2012 11:32AM ET
It was a quiet day ahead of the US nonfarm payrolls figures, but that changed as soon as the figures for February came out in pre-market at 227K, beating estimates of 210K. January's figures were revised up to 284K from 243K. The aggregate surprise over the two months is thus 58K, signalling the US labour market continues to be stronger than expected.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.3 percent, but it is worth noting that the US total unemployment rate (U6) fell to 14.9 percent from 15.1 percent in January, which is the lowest level since February 2009. The US economy has now added 2 million jobs in a year.
Investors like the job data and the DAX Index is currently up 0.6 percent for the day (the index has jumped 0.3 percent on the nonfarm figures). The S&P 500 Index futures are currently up 0.3 percent ahead of the open.
The take away is this: while Europe is stabilising and China is slowing down a bit, the US economy is healing with good job creation.
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