US non farm payroll posted another gain in February, when the US economy added 242,000 jobs. The bad news though is that, just as last month, it is was mostly minimum wage jobs which were created in areas such as education and health (+86K), retail (+55K) and leisure and hospitality (+48K), while for example manufacturing jobs dropped by 16k. And the even worse news, though hardly surprising given the above, was that wage growth was negative. Coming in at -0.1%, this was only the sixth time in the last decade wages have declined. People can therefore make of this report what they want, and it is likely to allow the Fed to continue to pretend that they are on course to raise rates multiple times this year, while the market will continue to assume that is a big fat lie.
