The US economy showed its clearest sign yet of recovery with February's unemployment report released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Some 379,000 jobs were added to US payrolls last month, led by the leisure and hospitality sectors.

To be sure, the jobs market is nowhere near its pre-pandemic health. First-time unemployment claims totaled 745,000 last week, up from 736,000 the week before, while both the unemployment rate, at 6.2%, and the number of unemployed persons, at 10 million, changed little in February. Although both measures are much lower than their April 2020 highs, they remain well above their pre-pandemic levels in February 2020 (3.5% and 5.7 million, respectively).

All that said, the gains in February were very telling, particularly for the commercial real estate industry. There were 355,000 jobs added in the leisure and hospitality sector; in the bar and restaurant sub-sector alone 286,000 positions were added. This is a strong signal of the service sector reopening, according to Fannie Mae's Chief Economist Doug Duncan.