3/5/22

The new jobs report came out on Friday.  678,000 jobs were gained in February and the unemployment rate dropped 3.8%.  The widespread growth was led by a particularly strong increase in leisure and hospitality jobs, among a few others.

That industry saw the addition of 179,000 jobs, with 124,000 of that total growth coming from food service and drinking places.  However, the leisure in hospitality industry is still down 1.5 million jobs, or 9%.

The food-service sector is still down 1.5 million jobs since 2020.

What is perhaps the most interesting bit of data from the report pertains to the average work week. This most current report shows that the average work week has increased .4 hours, bringing the total increase to 40.7 hours a week.  That pans out to 40 hours and 42 minutes.