March 2024 Jobs Report: A Look at February's Trends

Executive Summary

Job growth continued to accelerate last month as the U.S. economy added 275,000 new jobs in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most major industries saw little change month over month but some of the industries that continued to see sizable job growth include healthcare, government and the social assistance.

The labor force participation rate remained unchanged for the third month in a row holding at 6.5% (the rate still hasn’t recovered to its pre-pandemic rate of 62.3%). However, the unemployment rate did experience a change after staying steady at 3.7%, seeing an increase in February to 3.9%. 6.5 million unemployed people in February. Looking at the total population, there were 5.7 million people in February not in the labor force who currently want a job.

Unemployment rates, specific to the industries Aston Carter supports, were as follows: finance and financials (2.1%), professional and business services (4.4%), hospitals (1.5%), and manufacturing (3.1%). Among skilled labor categories Aston Carter sources talent for, unemployment in business and financial was 2.3% and office and administrative was 3.6%.