Roundup: U.S. job growth picks up in Feb, jobless rate at almost 7-year low

U.S. job growth accelerated in February and the unemployment rate fell to an almost seven-year low despite severe cold weather, the latest sign of steady improvement in the job market, the Labor Department said Friday.

The U.S. economy added 295,000 jobs last month, up from a revised 239,000 gain in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 percent, the lowest level since May 2008, from 5.7 percent in the previous month.

Hiring was strong across most industries, including the leisure and hospitality sector, professional and business services, health care and retail trade, despite some severe winter storms in most parts of the country last month, the department said.

"Winter weather appeared to have little impact on the headline figures in today's report," Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement, adding that 2014 was the best year for job growth since the late 1990s and 2015 has continued at this pace.

The economy has now added more than 200,000 jobs for 12 consecutive months, and the unemployment rate has reached the top range of 5.2 percent to 5.5 percent that the Federal Reserve officials estimate consistent with full employment.

The better-than-expected jobs report provided further evidence that U.S. economic recovery had picked up, which could put pressure on the Federal Reserve to start raising its benchmark short-term interest rates later this year. The central bank has kept its short-term interest rates near zero since December 2008.

But economists said the Fed could afford to be patient in deciding when to raise interest rates as labor force participation rate is lower than expected and wage growth remains sluggish.

The decline in unemployment rate last month largely reflected people dropping out of the labor force, as the labor force participation rate fell to 62.8 percent from 62.9 percent in January. People out of work were not officially counted as unemployed if they had stopped looking for jobs, according to the labor department.

The wages of U.S. workers were not growing very fast despite strong job gains. Average hourly earnings rose just 3 cents to 24. 78 U.S. dollars in February and were up only 2 percent over the past 12 months, which suggests underlying slack remains in the labor market.

"There still remains a lot more slack in the labor market -- part-timers, folks who gave up looking," said Justin Wolfers, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. " We're learning that the recovery could have a lot further to run without igniting inflation."

The Federal Reserve will hold its next policy meeting on March 17-18 and is expected to give more hints on the timing of its first interest rate hike since the recent financial crisis.

Last month, Fed Chair Janet Yellen signaled that the central bank would likely first change its forward guidance in coming months by dropping the "patient" language for considering an interest rate hike if the economic conditions continued to improve. Endite