Evaluating February 2018 Job Growth by 13 Metrics

In February 2018, the U.S. added 313,000 jobs, with the number of jobs growing 1.6 percent over the past year. The unemployment rate was steady at 4.1 percent, a 17-year low.

The Wall Street Journal analyzed the February jobs report by 13 different measures including hiring history, or the percent change in total nonfarm jobs over the previous 12 months; wage growth and changes in average earnings, the share of the population in the labor force, the share of the "prime-age" population in the work force, and the unemployment rate by race/ethnicity, and gender.

Among workers ages 25 to 54, when retirement and education do not keep people out of the labor force, participation rates climbed to their highest level in years. The share of 25- to 54-year olds who are employed climbed to 79.3 percent, the best since 2008, while the labor-force participation rate of this age group climbed to 82.2 percent, the highest since 2010.

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