, Columnist
Keep an Eye on That Unemployment Rate
Unemployment troughs invariably precede recessions. We’re not there yet, but the rate does seem to have stopped falling.
Watch and wait.
Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg
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Amid a February jobs report in which an unexpectedly small gain of 20,000 payroll jobs was the big news, the 3.8 percent unemployment rate got less attention. It was down two-tenths of a percentage point from January, but the January number was probably boosted by the government shutdown, and small one-month moves like that usually don’t signify much anyway.
What might signify something, though, is that the unemployment rate was also 3.8 percent last May, August and October.