If bulls were expecting a February payrolls miss, they did not get it when moments ago the BLS reported that nonfarm payrolls surged by 242K in the past month, smashing expectations of 195K, with the January and December prints both revised higher by 21K and 9K respectively. The unemployment rate at 4.9% printed unchanged from the prior month and as expected. According to the BLS, over the  past 3 months, job gains have averaged 228,000 per month.

The move higher in jobs was mostly driven by minimum wage jobs in healthcare (+57,000), retail (+55,000), and food service professions which rose by 40,000. This explains why for yet another month, wage growth was not only not there, but with a -0.1% decline after the January minimum wage hike induced bounce, posted a drop of -0.1%, which was the first drop since December 2014.

As shown in the chart below, the February hourly earnings drop was only the 6th drop in the past decade.

Worse, the average weekly earnings tumbled from $878.15 to $872.04, which rising just 1.7% Y/Y, was the weakest increase since February 2014.