Unemployment Rate Remains Unchanged
Friday, March 5, 2:42 PM ET

The report did not quantify the impact of the snowstorms on the East Coast on the jobless number, though economists believe that there may have been a net gain in job creation had it not snowed as much. The data may also be skewed as the storms occured during the week that the government surveys businesses about their payrolls, and as such, employees who could not make it to work and were not paid would not have been included in the responses.

The data does seem to suggest that the labor market may be headed in the right direction, as the unemployment figure has seemed to stabilize.

There are currently 14.9 million Americans who are unemployed, roughly twich as many versus at the beginning of the recession. The Labor department also upped the figure for January job losses to 26,000 from 20,000.

When including discouraged workers and those who have stopped looking for work, the unemployment rate stands at 16.8 percent, versus January's 16.5 percent, still below October's record high of 17.4 percent.

The average work week dropped to 33.8 hours from 33.9 hours in January, a figure that several economists also blame on the snowstorm.