U.S. adds 227,000 jobs in February

The United States added 227,000 jobs in February, the latest display of the breadth and strength of the economic recovery. The country has put together the most impressive three months of job growth since before the Great Recession.

The unemployment rate stayed at 8.3 percent. It was the first time in six months it didn't fall, and that was because a half-million Americans started looking for work. In the past two months, almost a million have started looking.

"I have more optimism," said Freda Bratcher, 54, who had worked as a substance abuse counselor but has been unemployed for 16 months. She had stopped searching, but showed up Friday at a Miami career center after some of her friends landed jobs.

"There's something out there for me," she said. "And if other people are getting hired, then why not me?"

The Labor Department, in its monthly jobs report, said Friday that December and January, already two of the best months for jobs since the recession, were even stronger than first estimated.

January job growth was revised higher by 41,000 to 284,000. December job growth was raised by 20,000 to 223,000. The overall job growth for February of 227,000 beat economists' estimate of 210,000.

"It's a very strong report," said Bob Baur, chief global economist at Principal Global Investors, an asset management company. "I could hardly find anything not to like in it."

Since the beginning of December, the country has added 734,000 jobs. That three-month gain is roughly what the country was achieving in the late 1990s, although it is less impressive now because the country holds about 40 million more people.

The improving jobs picture figures to improve the re-election chances for President Barack Obama and to complicate the political strategy for the Republicans competing for the right to replace him.

Obama on Friday told workers at a Virginia manufacturing plant run by Rolls-Royce, a maker of aircraft engines, that American manufacturing is adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s.

Mitt Romney, the leader in delegates among Obama's would-be challengers, did not directly address the fresh economic data at a stop in Mississippi, but he criticized Obama for failing to bring the unemployment rate below 8 percent.