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Advance copies of this statement are made available to the

press under lock-up conditions with the explicit understanding 

that the data are embargoed until 8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard 

Time. . 

Statement of 

Erica L. Groshen 

Commissioner 

Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Friday, March 4, 2016

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 242,000 in 

February, and the unemployment rate held at 4.9 percent. Job 

growth occurred in health care and social assistance, retail 

trade, food services and drinking places, and private 

educational services. Mining employment continued to decline. 

Incorporating revisions for December and January, which 

increased nonfarm payroll employment by 30,000, monthly job 

gains have averaged 228,000 over the past 3 months. In the 12 

months prior to February, employment growth averaged 225,000 per 

month. 

Employment in health care and social assistance rose by 

57,000 in February. Health care added 38,000 jobs over the 

month. Within health care, employment increased by 24,000 in 

ambulatory care services (which includes offices of physicians 

and home health care) and by 11,000 in hospitals. Employment in 
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hospitals has increased by 181,000 over the past year. The 

social assistance industry added 19,000 jobs in February, mostly 

in individual and family services (+14,000). 

Retail trade added 55,000 jobs in February. Job gains 

occurred in food and beverage stores (+15,000) and other general 

merchandise stores (+13,000). Employment in retail trade 

increased by 339,000 over the past year. 

Employment in food services and drinking places rose by 

40,000 in February. Over the past 12 months, the industry has 

added 359,000 jobs. 

Employment in private educational services rose by 28,000 

in February, after edging down in January (-20,000). 

Construction employment continued to trend up in February 

(+19,000) and has increased by 253,000 over the past year. In 

February, residential specialty trade contractors added 14,000 

jobs; this industry accounted for about half of the job growth 

in construction over the past year. 

In February, employment in professional and business 

services changed little for the second month in a row. In 2015, 

the industry added an average of 52,000 jobs per month. Within 

the industry, employment in professional and technical services 

continued to trend up over the month (+18,000), while the number 

of jobs in temporary help services was little changed. 
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Mining employment fell by 19,000 in February, with most of 

the decline in support activities for mining (-16,000). Since a 

recent peak in September 2014, employment in mining has 

decreased by 171,000, or 20 percent. More than three-fourths of 

the job losses over this period occurred in support activities 

for mining. 

Average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm 

payrolls fell by 3 cents in February to $25.35, following a 

12-cent increase in January. Over the past 12 months, average 

hourly earnings have risen by 2.2 percent. From January 2015 to 

January 2016, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers 

(CPI-U) increased by 1.3 percent (on a seasonally adjusted 

basis). 

Turning now to data from our survey of households, both the 

unemployment rate, at 4.9 percent, and the number of unemployed 

persons, at 7.8 million, held steady in February. Over the year, 

these measures were down by 0.6 percentage point and 831,000, 

respectively. Among the unemployed in February, 2.2 million, or 

27.7 percent, had been jobless for 27 weeks or more. 

In February, both the labor force and the number of 

employed persons increased. The labor force participation rate 

edged up to 62.9 percent, and the employment-population ratio 

edged up to 59.8 percent. Both measures have risen by 0.5 

percentage point since September. 
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Among those employed, the number working part time for 

economic reasons, also referred to as involuntary part-time 

workers, was unchanged in February at 6.0 million. (Involuntary 

part-time workers are those who would have preferred full-time 

employment but were working part time because their hours had 

been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time 

work.) 

Among people who were neither working nor looking for work 

in February, 1.8 million were classified as marginally attached 

to the labor force, down from 2.2 million a year earlier. The 

number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally 

attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, was 

599,000 in February, down from 732,000 a year earlier. (The 

marginally attached are individuals who had not looked for work 

in the 4 weeks prior to the survey but wanted a job, were 

available for work, and had looked for a job within the last 12 

months.) 

In summary, nonfarm payroll employment increased by 242,000 

in February, and the unemployment rate held at 4.9 percent.