Strong Job Growth Continues as Latest Covid Wave Eases

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“Today’s news is a welcome reminder that we’re coming back stronger as a country and as people,” Mr. Biden said at a White House event highlighting the president’s “Made in America” efforts. He noted that before the aid plan passed, the Congressional Budget Office did not expect the unemployment rate to fall to 3.8 percent in the next decade.

Employment growth accelerated in February, as falling coronavirus cases brought customers back to businesses and workers back to the office.

The data released Friday was collected in mid-February, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which shook up global financial markets and caused a sharp increase in energy prices. Analysts say the United States is less vulnerable than Europe to the economic effects of the crisis, but they warn that a prolonged conflict will have global repercussions that are hard to predict.

So far, at least, the labor market recovery has overcome every obstacle. Job openings are near a record high. Layoffs are at a new low. And hiring has remained strong in the ebb and flow of successive waves of the pandemic — employers have added at least 400,000 jobs every month since May, the longest such streak on record.

“This is an economy that has learned to manage very well through uncertainty,” said Robert Rosener, senior U.S. economist with Morgan Stanley. “We’ve continually been surprised by the resilience of the U.S. labor market.”

Hannah Ashford spent most of the first two years of the pandemic trying to figure out how to keep Sweet Yield Studio, her Oklahoma City dance studio, from going out of business. But in December, she hit a milestone: Enrollment for the spring semester met and then surpassed its prepandemic level for the first time.

As a result, Ms. Ashford, 30, has begun thinking about the future. She is scoping out space to add a second studio and weighing hiring more teachers to staff it. On Friday, she made an offer to a graphic designer, who accepted the job.

“It does feel good to have some room within our business to consider some of those things for the future,” she said. “It feels like we are slowly finding that stability.”