The Economy Shows Slow Improvement

 

The Federal Reserve seems to think that the labor market is stabilizing. At the same time, the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent in February, down from its peak of 10.1 percent in
October 2009.

Although the long anticipated turnaround in employment has yet to occur, some slight improvement on this front is providing hope that job gains may only be a month or two away.

Nonfarm payroll employment fell 36,000 in February at a seasonally adjusted annual rate. Though greater than the loss of 26,000 jobs in January, given the extremely bad weather over much of the nation that month, the true job losses might not have been quite as large.

With the return of more normal weather this month, March employment numbers, due out in early April, will likely be the first positive employment report in more than two years and provide additional proof that the U.S. economy is in the early stages of a recovery.

Other indicators also show progress. Industrial production ?EUR??,,????'?????<