People walk past a Starbucks coffee shop in Washington, D.C., the United States, March 5, 2021. U.S. employers added 379,000 jobs in February, with the unemployment rate little changed at 6.2 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday. In February, most of the job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, with smaller gains in temporary help services, health care and social assistance, retail trade, and manufacturing, according to the monthly report released by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Xinhua) -- U.S. employers added 379,000 jobs in February, with the unemployment rate little changed at 6.2 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.
In February, most of the job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, with smaller gains in temporary help services, health care and social assistance, retail trade, and manufacturing, according to the monthly report released by the department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Employment fell in state and local government education, construction and mining, the report showed.
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, edged down by 0.1 percentage point to 6.2 percent in February, but still well above the pre-pandemic level of 3.5 percent in February 2020.
Despite the improvement in the pandemic-ravaged labor market, some 10 million people remained unemployed in February, well above the pre-pandemic level of 5.7 million, the report showed.
The number of permanent job losers, at 3.5 million, was essentially unchanged in February, but is 2.2 million higher than a year earlier, according to the report.
The labor force participation rate remained at 61.4 percent in February, according to the report, and this measure is 1.9 percentage points lower than a year earlier.
Amid widespread COVID-19 shutdowns in March and April last year, 22 million Americans lost their jobs. Despite improvement in the pandemic-ravaged labor market, the recovery has been stalled in recent months amid surging COVID-19 cases.
The weekly jobless claims report released Thursday showed that the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs -- state and federal combined -- for the week ending Feb. 13 decreased by 1 million, but remained elevated at 18 million, as the country continued to grapple with the fallout of surging COVID-19 infections.
Lawmakers are debating a 1.9-trillion-U.S.-dollar COVID-19 relief package in the Senate, as Democrats highlighted the urgency to rein in the surging pandemic, and to bolster the ravaged economy, while Republicans called it a Democratic wish list, arguing that the plan includes provisions unrelated to the crisis, and the high price tag could result in unsustainable debt for future generations.
Democrats hope to send the bill to President Joe Biden's desk before unemployment benefits expire in mid-March. Enditem
