Since the beginning of December, the country has added 734,000 jobs. The only three-month stretch that was better since the recession ended was March through May 2010, when the government was hiring tens of thousands of temporary workers for the census. The improving jobs picture figures to improve the re-election chances for President Barack Obama and to complicate the political strategy for the Republicans competing for the right to replace him. Obama on Friday visited a manufacturing plant run by Rolls-Royce, a maker of aircraft engines, in Virginia, a state expected to be closely contested in November. Mitt Romney, the leader in delegates among Obama's would-be challengers, did not directly address the fresh economic data at a stop in Mississippi, but he criticized Obama for failing to bring the unemployment rate below 8 percent. The unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent since February 2009, a month after Obama's inauguration, a point regularly hammered by Romney. Last year, government cut an average of 22,000 jobs a month, taking some of the economic punch out of job creation in the private sector. When the economy is improving, many economists say, the household survey does the better job of picking that up because it detects small business hiring. The labor force participation rate, which measures how many adults are working or looking for work as a share of the adult population, rose in February for the first time since last August. Consumer confidence in February was the highest in a year, and unemployment claims, the best measure of the pace of layoffs, have averaged 355,000 a week, near a four-year low. Worker productivity rose last year at its slowest pace in a generation, suggesting companies will have to hire to meet growing demand.
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