US employers added 275,000 jobs last month.

If the economy is slowing down, no one has told the labor market.

Employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported Friday, in another month that exceeded expectations.

It was the third straight month of gains above 200,000, and the 38th straight month of growth – further evidence that the US jobs engine is still going strong after the pandemic shutdowns.

“We expected a slowdown in the labor market, a more material easing of conditions, but we’re just not seeing that,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.

The previous two months, December and January, were revised downwards by a total of 167,000 jobs, reflecting the higher degree of statistical volatility in the winter months. That doesn’t disrupt the picture of consistent, robust increases, which now looks a little smoother.

At the same time, the unemployment rate, based on a household survey, rose from 3.7 percent in January to a two-year high of 3.9 percent. A broader measure of slack labor market conditions, which includes people working part-time who would prefer to work full-time, has risen steadily and now stands at 7.3 percent.

The unemployment rate was driven by people losing or leaving their jobs, and by people entering the labor market to look for work. The employment rate of people in their prime working years – aged 25 to 54 – rose again to 83.5 percent, matching a level last year that was the highest since the early 2000s.

Average hourly wages rose 4.3 percent over the year, although the pace of increases is slowing.

“We have recently seen increases in real wages, and that has encouraged people to re-enter the labor market, and that is a good development for workers,” said Kory Kantenga, a senior economist at job search website LinkedIn. As wage growth slows, he says, the likelihood of more people looking for work decreases.

As recently as last fall, economists were predicting a much more modest increase in employment, with employment concentrated in a few industries. But while some industries bloated by the pandemic have cut jobs, expected declines in sectors like construction have not materialized. Rising wages, attractive benefits and more flexible work schedules have brought millions of workers off the sidelines.

Increased levels of immigration have also increased the labor supply. According to a analysis by the Brookings Institutionthe influx has roughly doubled the number of jobs the economy could add per month in 2024 without upward pressure on inflation, to between 160,000 and 200,000.

Healthcare and government again led wage increases in February, while construction continued to rise steadily. Retail, transportation and warehousing, which have been flat to negative in recent months, recovered.

No major industry lost a substantial number of jobs. Credit intermediation continued its downward trend: this sector, which mainly includes commercial banking, has lost around 123,000 jobs since the beginning of 2021.

That doesn’t mean the employment landscape looks rosy for everyone. Employee confidence, such as measured by the business rating website Glassdoor, has been steadily declining as layoffs by tech and media companies made headlines. This is especially true for white-collar professions such as human resources and consulting, while professions that require in-person work — such as healthcare, construction and manufacturing — are more optimistic.

“It’s a two-track labor market,” says Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at Glassdoor, noting that The job search takes longer for people with a university degree. “For skilled workers in risk-intensive sectors, anyone who has been laid off is having difficulty finding a new job, while for workers or frontline services it is still competitive.”

The past few months have been littered with strong, industry-leading economic data analysts surveyed of the National Association for Business Economics to raise their expectations for gross domestic product and lower their expectations for the trajectory of unemployment. It happened even as inflation was easing, leading the Federal Reserve to telegraph its plans for rate cuts sometime this year, further raising growth expectations.

Mervin Jebaraj, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, helped map out the survey responses. He said the mood was helped in part by waning concerns about the federal government shutdown and draconian budget cuts, after several close calls since the fall. And he sees no clear reason why the recovery will end anytime soon.

“Once it starts going, it keeps going,” Mr. Jebaraj said. “You had this external stimulus with all these trillions of dollars of government spending. Now it’s kind of self-sustaining even though the money is gone.”