WASHINGTON, March 7 (Reuters) - The number of workers on U.S. payrolls plunged in February at the sharpest rate since November 2001 and the jobless rate rose to 5.8 percent, the government said on Friday in a shockingly gloomy economic report.
The Labor Department said payroll jobs outside the farm sector declined by 308,000 last month - in contrast to expectations in a Reuters poll that they would rise by 8,000. Payrolls had risen by 185,000 in January, a number that was revised up from the originally reported 143,000 gain.
The jobless rate climbed one-tenth of a percentage point from January's 5.7 percent.
The grim report comes amid growing uncertainty about the economy's health at a time when many analysts believe uncertainty stemming from the threat of war with Iraq is leading to reluctance among employers to hire.
A Labor Department analyst told Reuters in an interview that special factors such as huge winter storms on the East Coast might have contributed to the February job declines but he could not quantify the impact.
Although the consensus forecast of economists had projected a slight rise in payrolls in February, several analysts had been revising their forecasts to anticipate a possible decline after a raft of downbeat signals in recent days, including a spike in applications for jobless claims.
February's job losses were widely distributed across industries. Job losses in the retail sector were especially steep, falling 92,000. Manufacturing jobs dropped 53,000 and construction jobs tumbled 48,000.
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