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hide captionThe scene at a job fair for veterans earlier this year in Washington, D.C.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The scene at a job fair for veterans earlier this year in Washington, D.C.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
The nation's unemployment rate edged up to 6.7 percent in February from 6.6 percent the month before, but employers added more jobs than expected, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.
According to BLS, the number of jobs on public and private payrolls grew by 175,000 last month — about 25,000 more than economists had expected.
The news was released at 8:30 a.m. ET. We'll have more from the report and reactions to it as the morning continues.
Our original post previewed the report:
The latest news about job growth and the nation's unemployment rate is due at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Economists expect to hear that while the jobless rate stayed at a five-year-low 6.6 percent last month, job growth was relatively weak.
As NPR's John Ydstie reported on Morning Edition, this winter's especially cold weather across much of the nation likely held down hiring — particularly in the construction industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to say that about 150,000 jobs were added to payrolls in February.
That would be a modest uptick from January's pace. In its initial report for that month, BLS said employers added only 113,000 jobs to payrolls. But 150,000 jobs is still a small gain in an economy that employs more than 145 million people.
We'll be updating this post as news from the report comes in.
