Jobs Report: What You Should Know About Recent Employment Gains

The American economy added 235,000 jobs in February while the unemployment fell back to 4.7 percent after having ticked up to 4.8 percent, according to the monthly employment report released Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Job growths was primarily driven by gains in construction, the private education sector, manufacturing, health care and mining.

"It certainly looks like the economy delivered the goods in February, in large part because of the goods-producing sector," said Bankrate.com Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick. "Employers were ‘springing forward’ with their hiring, helped by warmer-than-usual weather last month."

He continued: "With the jobs report behind and barring the truly unforeseen, the Federal Reserve has a green light to raise interest rates by 25 basis points at the March meeting."

Chief Economist Curt Long at the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions agreed.

"Most doubts about whether the FOMC would hike at its March meeting were put to bed last week after a series of hawkish remarks from Fed officials, but any lingering uncertainty has certainly been squelched with today's strong report," Long said.

This month's jobs report continues a long, positive trend of job growth in the American economy. Since December, job gains averaged a strong 209,000 per month.

"People want to know whether this is a so-called 'Trump bump' for the job market or something else," Hamrick said. "The quick answer is that sentiment or optimism on the part of business and consumers has been lifted by the Trump victory, but that’s not quite the same as increased sales. Businesses need to see a rise in demand before deciding to boost their employment."

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