- U.S. adds 192,000 new jobs; unemployment rate dips to 8.9 percent, By Neil Irwin, March 4, 2011, Washington Post: “The missing piece of the U.S. economic recovery – job creation – is finally starting to fall into place. Employers added 192,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department said Friday, and the unemployment rate edged down to 8.9 percent from 9 percent, the third straight month of decline. While the job numbers received a boost from people returning to work after being marooned at home during the January snowstorms, the report was still the most solid evidence yet that the economic recovery is gaining momentum…”
- Spurred by private hiring, job growth gathers steam, By Catherine Rampell, March 4, 2011, New York Times: “The waiting game still is not over, but it may be soon. The nation’s employers added 192,000 jobs in February, up from a gain of 63,000 the previous month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. While February’s number represented the fastest growth in nearly a year, it was partly the result of a bounce back from unusually depressed hiring in January, when major snowstorms shuttered offices and factories around the country. Taken together, the job growth for the first two months of 2011 has not been much better than it was last fall. Still, economists say they are hopeful that the pace will soon pick up, assuming higher global energy and food prices do not derail the recovery…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty