February Enjoys Robust Job Growth Fears Renewed Over High-Tech Labor Shortages

Surprisingly robust job growth pushed the nation’s unemployment rate back to a 24-year low of 4.6 percent in February, renewing concerns the United States is running short of skilled workers.

The seasonally adjusted rate, down from 4.7 percent in January and December, matched November’s, the lowest since October 1973, the Labor Department said Friday. Employers created a greater-than-expected 310,000 jobs, on top of 375,000 in January.

Two temporary factors - unseasonably mild winter weather and historically low mortgage rates, which have risen a bit since - accounted for some of the job growth. But analysts attributed much of the advance to the strength of the U.S. economy, which at least so far is showing only modest signs of spillover from Asian financial turmoil.

Economist Mark Zandi of Regional Financial Associates in West Chester, Pa., said the unemployment rate could sink to 4 percent by late summer, a level unseen since the 1960s.

“The labor shortage is acute from Boston to San Francisco,” he said. “The betting is that the effects of Asia will cool business demand for labor. … But it’s increasingly looking like that bet will be lost.”

A possible sign of Asian impact was a 2,000-job decline at manufacturers, which are suffering a loss of export sales to the region. But that was swamped by big gains in nearly every other category.

“These are good times for America,” President Clinton said in a Rose Garden appearance.

But he took pains to point out administration initiatives to supply more skilled technical workers to American companies, including Commerce Department promotional efforts and Labor Department job training grants.

“There are hundreds of thousands of vacancies out there in America right now,” Clinton said. “The key to expanding opportunity is education and training.”

On Wall Street, the normally inflation-wary bond market shrugged off the jobs report and the stock market bounced back after a two-day retreat. The Dow Jones average of industrial stocks jumped 125 points to close at 8,569.

Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Katharine Abraham attributed some February job gains to the weather and mortgage rates - 41,000 in construction and 7,000 in mortgage banking. But strong gains continued in engineering and management services, 14,000, and computer services and data processing, 20,000.

“Over the past four years, this relatively small (computer services) industry has added more than half a million jobs,” she said.