Nonfarm employment fell 36,000 in February, worse than the 26,000 job loss $SPY

·         Nonfarm employment fell 36,000 in February, worse than the 26,000 job loss in January but better than expectations for a weaker, storm-depressed number. Teasing out the storm effects on the establishment survey is tricky, but the household survey should be less impacted and there the news looked encouraging. In particular, the fact that the 0.3% point move down in the unemployment rate in January to 9.7% was sustained in February was a welcome development, as some of that prior decline was expected to be reversed in today's report. Moreover, the fact that the unemployment rate held steady even as the labor force participation ticked up to 64.8% signals that the process of nibbling away at the massive amount of labor market slack may be underway. The average workweek did tick down to 33.8 hours (likely a weather effect) which pulled total hours worked down 0.3%. The growth in average hourly earnings slowed to 0.1% (actually moving in the opposite direction of the weather bias) and so earnings are now growing at only a 1.5% annual rate in Q1. Sifting through the noise in this report -- and there is considerable noise -- it appears that last month the labor market continued on its gradual path toward healing.