The US economy has regained 90 percent of the jobs destroyed by the pandemic. In the last year, including last February figures, 7 million new jobs were created, an accomplishment highlighted by President Joseph Biden, last week, in the State of the Union speech. Before both chambers of Congress, Biden said “more jobs created in one year than ever before.” According to the Labor Department, 678,000 new non- agricultural jobs were created in February, which brought down the unemployment rate to 3.8 percent, from 4 percent in January. Since last May, the rate of monthly job creation has remained above 400,000, while the percentage of the working age population, known as the rate of participation in the labor-force, increased to 62.3 percent in February, from 62.2 percent in January, still 1.1 percent less than where it was two years ago. Additionally, service sector wages increased more than those in the goods-producing sector. For instance, the leisure and hospitality sector, severely reduced at the height of the pandemic, registered the highest growing wages, with many of the gains among lowest paid workers. This is mainly due to vigorous job creation, as illustrated by the 179,000 new jobs created in February in leisure and hospitality, the highest of all sectors. However, in February, average hourly earnings in the private sector increased 5.1 percent, less than 5.5 percent in January and still under the increase of 7.5 percent in consumer prices, the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.
