Rebound: US job growth positive in Feb

Washington: America's employers stepped up their hiring in February as confirmed viral cases declined, consumers spent big chunks of their government aid checks and the economy appeared to be sustaining a tentative recovery.

Economists have forecast that job growth reached 175,000 in February, according to data provider FactSet. That would mark a sharp improvement over an average of just 29,000 jobs a month from November through January. Yet with the nation still 10 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level, monthly hiring would need to significantly accelerate to bring relief to the many people who remain laid off, especially at restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues and other areas of the hospitality industry that are far from recovered. The unemployment rate is predicted to have ticked up from 6.3 per cent to 6.4 per cent on the assumption that more Americans started looking for work in February and began to be counted as unemployed. One year into the pandemic, most analysts are growing more optimistic that hiring will accelerate in the coming months, with the economy strengthening and gauges of consumer spending and manufacturing rising.

Americans as a whole have accumulated a huge pile of savings after having slashed spending on travel, movie tickets and visits to bars and restaurants. Much of that money is expected to be spent once most people feel comfortable about going out. And nearly all of President Joe Biden's USD 1.9 trillion economic rescue package looks likely to win approval in Congress in the coming weeks. It would provide, among other things, USD 1,400 relief checks to most adults, an additional $400 in weekly unemployment aid and another round of aid to small businesses. With so much money being pumped into the economy, Oxford Economics now forecasts that growth will reach 7 per cent for all of 2021, which would be the fastest calendar-year expansion since 1984. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the nation will add a substantial 6.2 million jobs this year, though that wouldn't be nearly enough to restore employment to pre-pandemic levels. Still, the size of the Biden relief package, coming as the economy is already showing improvement, has stoked fears that growth could overheat and spur higher inflation, send borrowing costs up and lead the Federal Reserve to jack up interest rates.