Wall Street rallied and sent the Dow Jones industrials to a 3 1/2-year high on news that employers added more than a quarter-million jobs in February.
"Businesses are growing increasingly confident in the economy, and we're beginning to see more aggressive hiring," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. "Companies are starting to put their money where their mouth is."
While U.S. businesses added the most jobs in four months, more job seekers resumed looking for work, pushing the unemployment rate higher.
The latest picture of the country's employment climate, released by the Labor Department on Friday, showed that the nation's payrolls expanded by 262,000 last month. Gains were broadbased: Manufacturing, construction, retail, health care and business services were among the sectors seeing increases.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials surged 107.52 points to close at 10,940.55, the highest since June 12, 2001.
February's payroll gain was nearly double the 132,000 jobs added in January.
Yet, for those who want to find work, the journey to snag a job can still be bumpy.
The overall civilian unemployment rate, which comes from a separate statistical survey from the payroll figures, rose to 5.4 percent in February from 5.2 percent in January. The increase partly reflected growth in the labor force as more people started job searches.
The jobless rate had been either 5.4 percent or 5.5 percent for the last six months of 2004.
President Bush welcomed the jobs report. "The economy's getting better," he said. "Today we got some good news."
In other economic news Friday, U.S. factories saw orders for goods rise by 0.2 percent in January, following a 0.5 percent rise in December. Gains in January reflected stronger demand for "nondurable" goods, such as food, leather products and chemicals.
Economists believe the economy in the January-to-March quarter is growing at a rate of around 4 percent, which would be a sufficient pace for solid -- but not spectacular -- job creation.
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