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 

William J. Wiatrowski 

Acting Commissioner 

Bureau of Labor Statistics 

Friday, March 10, 2017

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 235,000 in February, and 

the unemployment rate changed little at 4.7 percent. Job gains 

occurred in construction, private educational services, 

manufacturing, health care, and mining. 

Incorporating revisions for December and January, which 

increased nonfarm payroll employment by 9,000 on net, monthly 

job gains have averaged 209,000 over the past 3 months.

In the goods-producing sector, construction employment rose 

by 58,000 in February, after increasing by 40,000 a month 

earlier. Job growth continued among residential specialty trade 

contractors in February (+15,000). Employment among 

nonresidential specialty trade contractors grew by 22,000, after 

changing little in recent months. Job gains also occurred in 

heavy and civil engineering construction over the month 

(+15,000).
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Employment in manufacturing increased by 28,000 in 

February. Employment rose in food manufacturing (+9,000) and in 

machinery (+7,000), while transportation equipment lost 6,000 

jobs. Manufacturing has added 57,000 jobs since November. 

Mining added 8,000 jobs in February, led by a gain in 

support activities for mining (+6,000). Mining employment has 

increased by 20,000 since a recent low in October 2016.

In the service-providing sector, private educational 

services added 29,000 jobs in February, following little 

employment change in January (-5,000). This industry has added 

105,000 jobs over the year.

Health care employment rose by 27,000 in February, with 

most of the gain in ambulatory health care services (+18,000). 

Health care has added 357,000 jobs over the past 12 months. 

Employment continued to trend up in professional and 

business services in February (+37,000) and has increased by 

597,000 over the year. 

Retail trade employment edged down in February (-26,000), 

following an increase of 40,000 in the prior month. 

Average hourly earnings of all employees on private nonfarm 

payrolls rose by 6 cents in February, following a gain of 5

cents in January. Over the past 12 months, average hourly 

earnings have risen by 2.8 percent. From January 2016 to January
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2017, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) 

increased by 2.5 percent (on a seasonally adjusted basis). 

Turning to measures from the survey of households, the 

major labor market indicators were about unchanged over the 

month. Both the unemployment rate, at 4.7 percent, and the 

number of unemployed people, at 7.5 million, remained little 

changed in February. There was also little movement in the 

number of unemployed people who had been looking for work for 27 

weeks or more. In February, there were 1.8 million such 

individuals, who accounted for 23.8 percent of the unemployed.

Both the labor force participation rate, at 63.0 percent, 

and the employment-population ratio, at 60.0 percent, showed 

little change in February.

Among the employed, 5.7 million worked part time for 

economic reasons in February, little different from January. 

(These involuntary part-time workers would prefer to work full 

time but had their hours cut back or were unable to find fulltime jobs.) 

Among those neither working nor looking for work in 

February, 1.7 million were marginally attached to the labor 

force, about the same as a year earlier. Discouraged workers, a 

subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were 

available for them, numbered 522,000 in February, also little 

changed from a year earlier. (People who are marginally attached 
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to the labor force 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 rose by 235,000 in 

February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 4.7

percent.