US non-farm payrolls rose 311k in February, above the 225k consensus. There were 34k of downward revisions to the past two months of data, but this is still a strong number. A third of the jobs created were in the leisure and hospitality sector while retail added 50k, trade and transport rose 38k and private education/heath gained 74k. Those sectors that didn’t do so well include manufacturing, which fell 4k and financial services, which was down 1k. One of our concerns about the labour market is that we are seeing a big pick-up in lay-off announcements in well-paid, full-time sectors such as technology and financial ... (full story)