WASH­ING­TON-The Unit­ed States added 227,000 jobs in Feb­ru­ary as the na­tion has put to­geth­er the strongest three months of job growth since the Great Re­ces­sion, bod­ing well for Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma's re-elec­tion chances. The un­em­ploy­ment rate stayed at 8.3 per cent. It was the first time in six months that the rate did not fall, but that was on­ly be­cause a half-mil­lion Amer­i­cans, per­haps fi­nal­ly see­ing hope in the econ­o­my, start­ed look­ing for work.

The La­bor De­part­ment al­so said yes­ter­day that De­cem­ber and Jan­u­ary, al­ready two of the best months for jobs since the re­ces­sion, were even stronger than first es­ti­mat­ed. It added 61,000 jobs to its to­tal for those two months com­bined. Econ­o­mists were ex­pect­ing Feb­ru­ary job growth of 210,000.

"Over­all, an­oth­er very strong pay­roll re­port and there's every chance that March will bring more of the same," said Paul Ash­worth, chief US econ­o­mist with Cap­i­tal Eco­nom­ics, an eco­nom­ic con­sult­ing com­pa­ny. Since the be­gin­ning of De­cem­ber, the US has added 734,000 jobs. The on­ly bet­ter three-month stretch since the re­ces­sion 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 Oba­ma and to com­pli­cate the po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy for the Re­pub­li­cans com­pet­ing for the right to re­place him. Re­pub­li­cans seek­ing the White House have ac­cused Oba­ma of fail­ing to steer the econ­o­my out of a deep re­ces­sion, set­ting up the health of the na­tion's econ­o­my as a piv­otal is­sue in the 2012 elec­tion.

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. He told work­ers there that Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing is adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s. "The econ­o­my is get­ting stronger," the pres­i­dent said. "When I come to places like this and I see the work that's be­ing done, it gives me con­fi­dence there are bet­ter days ahead."

Mitt Rom­ney, the Re­pub­li­can leader in del­e­gates among Oba­ma's would-be chal­lengers, did not di­rect­ly ad­dress the fresh eco­nom­ic da­ta at a stop in Mis­sis­sip­pi, but he crit­i­cised Oba­ma for fail­ing to bring the un­em­ploy­ment rate be­low 8 per cent. The un­em­ploy­ment rate has re­mained above 8 per cent since Feb­ru­ary 2009, a month af­ter Oba­ma's in­au­gu­ra­tion, a point reg­u­lar­ly ham­mered by Rom­ney. But as more jobs are cre­at­ed, it is like­ly that the rate will fall be­low 8 per cent by Elec­tion Day.

Matt Mc­Don­ald, a part­ner at Hamil­ton Place Strate­gies and for­mer Bush White House of­fi­cial, cal­cu­lates that the US econ­o­my needs to add about 185,000 jobs per month to get to that point. "It will be a pho­to fin­ish to get be­low 8," he said. No US pres­i­dent since World War II has won re-elec­tion with un­em­ploy­ment high­er than 7.2 per cent

An As­so­ci­at­ed Press sur­vey of lead­ing econ­o­mists late last month showed the US econ­o­my is im­prov­ing faster than econ­o­mists had ex­pect­ed. They now fore­see slight­ly stronger growth and hir­ing than they did two months ear­li­er - trends that would help Oba­ma's re-elec­tion hopes in No­vem­ber.

"Over­all, an­oth­er very strong pay­roll re­port and there's every chance that March will bring more of the same," said Ash­worth. The fac­tors re­strain­ing the US econ­o­my seem to be eas­ing, or at least less dam­ag­ing than they used to be. Greece has struck a deal to get an in­ter­na­tion­al bailout and avoid a de­fault lat­er this month that could have rat­tled the world fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

And while the price of gaso­line has crept up al­most every day for a month, and is the high­est on record for this time of year, that has less of a bite when the econ­o­my is grow­ing and Amer­i­cans feel more con­fi­dent. Hir­ing in Feb­ru­ary was broad-based and im­proved in both high-pay­ing and low-pay­ing in­dus­tries. Man­u­fac­tur­ing, min­ing and the pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices in­dus­try, which in­cludes ac­count­ing work, all added jobs.

And gov­ern­ment - fed­er­al, state and lo­cal - cut on­ly 6,000 jobs in Feb­ru­ary and a re­vised 1,000 in Jan­u­ary. Last year, they cut an av­er­age of 22,000 jobs a month, tak­ing some of the eco­nom­ic punch out of job cre­ation in the pri­vate sec­tor. In all, 142.1 mil­lion Amer­i­cans re­port­ed that they had a job in Feb­ru­ary, the high­est since Jan­u­ary 2009, dur­ing the depths of the re­ces­sion. Man­u­fac­tur­ing pay­rolls are the high­est since April 2009.

And over the past three months, the num­ber of em­ployed peo­ple has risen by 1.45 mil­lion, the biggest three-month gain since March 2000. The gov­ern­ment us­es a sur­vey of pay­rolls to de­ter­mine how many jobs were added or lost each month. That is the sur­vey that pro­duced the 227,000 num­ber. But the pay­roll sur­vey tends to un­der­count small busi­ness­es and does not count the self-em­ployed.

AP