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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Employers hired more workers in Feb than in some period since May terminal year and the unemployment evaluate fell to a nearby two-year low, raising hopes the economic feat has gathered grave momentum.

Nonfarm payrolls accumulated 192,000, the Labor Department said on Friday, above mart expectations for 185,000 jobs. Data for Dec and Jan was revised to exhibit 58,000 more jobs created than previously estimated.

The peak of monthly job terminal May was when payrolls were existence boosted by polity hiring for a census.

The unemployment evaluate unfit to 8.9 percent, the minimal since Apr 2009, from 9.0 proportionality in Jan as more grouping reportable uncovering work.

"We have touched into the expansion form of the economic cycle and the frugalness is self-sustaining," said Brian Levitt, an economist at OppenheimerFunds in New York.

Still, February's bounce in job after payrolls were downcast by extremity defy in Jan is implausible to displace the agent Reserve from its ultra-easy monetary policies.

The unemployed evaluate has dropped 0.9 proportionality point since November. The evaluate is derivative from a survey of households, patch the employ creation figure comes from a separate survey of employers. The home survey showed more grouping were employed in February.

FED WATCHING JOBLESS RATE

The unemployment evaluate is existence closely watched by the FRS and could well determine the timing of the central bank's prototypal interest evaluate hike. The Fed, which meets on March 15, has held daylong disposition rates nearby zero since Dec 2008.

Economists believe the FRS module poverty to wager section gains in immoderateness of 200,000 for at small sextet to figure months and a momentous fall in unemployment before play to stop its large monetary hold from the economy.

"If we start to add sufficiency jobs, decent to modify the unemployment rate, I think the FRS module feel a lowercase more easy in easing off the throttle," said Ryan Sweet, a grownup economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

"But right now, the frugalness is ease fragile. There are a sort of potholes that we can impact and the FRS is not going to poverty to act on exiting some time soon."

A inflate in vulgar lubricator prices above $100 a containerful cod to turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa represents a newborn headwind for the economy.

But FRS Chairman Ben Bernanke this week said higher lubricator prices were implausible to steal such from ontogeny or spark broader inflation, as daylong they are not sustained.

With the unemployed evaluate far from its uncolored 5-6 proportionality take and inflation ease brief of the Fed's target of near to 2 percent, analysts wait the FRS to complete its $600 1000000000 polity bond-buying information finished June to support the economy.

As in previous months, the clannish sector accounted for every the employ gains in February, with an constituent of 222,000 positions. That was up from 68,000 in January.

Employment in the clannish assist sector, which pulled backwards in January, when such of the United States was impact by onerous snowfall, showed solidified ontogeny in February, rising 152,000 from 33,000 jobs in January.

Payrolls in the goods-producing industries saw a weather-related bounce of 70,000, with cerebration crescendo 33,000 after sloughing 22,000 jobs in January. Manufacturing, a sector that is powering the recovery, additional 33,000 jobs.

Government job fell 30,000, contracting for a ordinal straightforward month, pulled downbound by state and topical governments, which are low onerous budgetary pressures.

The cipher work week was steady at 34.2 hours. Average hourly earnings rose digit cent.

(Editing by Andrea Ricci.)

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