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The city of Philadelphia has announced plans to close 23 of its public schools. Several reasons went into the decision…but financial pressure and rising charter school enrollment are seen as key drivers.

But Philadelphia is not alone. In recent years, New York, Chicago and Washington D.C. have all done the same thing. These changes have a cost. In some quarters, the anger in Philadelphia is palpable.

“You will not, and I mean you will not lower the quality of my education,” says Paul Robeson High School student Totiana Myers.

Myers is one of the lucky ones. School officials pulled Robeson off the chopping block Thursday night. More than 10,000 students will likely be forced to switch schools. The closings are a move to shore up a $1.35 billion budget shortfall over the next five years.

“At some level, it does make some sense to think about ways to economize,” says Kate Shaw, executive director of with Research for Action, a nonprofit that studies education policy.

Charter schools have fueled declining enrollment in Philadelphia’s public schools filling their own classrooms with more than 55,000 students.   Shaw says closing half-empty schools as a way to consolidate resources is gaining traction nationwide.

But it’s a nuclear option.

“When you have a situation in which a school district doesn’t have enough money, has chronically low performing schools and is dropping enrollment, there is no good solution to those problems,” she says.

Mary Filardo with 21st Century School Fund in Washington D.C. says shuttering dozens of schools can provide some savings -- maintenance and laying off personnel.

But long-term, you can’t count on it.

“It’s not a clean sort of, ‘oh, if you close this school somehow you save all this money for it.' If you keep the children, obviously you are going to keep paying for the education of these children,” she says.

And while it’s easy to focus on buildings and spreadsheets, Filardo says you can’t forget the kids -- where they end up matters.

And in Philadelphia, the reality is many of these students will be moving from one school in trouble to another.  

America is slowly getting back to work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that the number of non-farm related jobs in this country grew by 236,000 in February, and unemployment fell a little to 7.7 percent.

“Regardless of what’s going on in Washington, we’re seeing significant growth in the private sector of the economy. And that really is the big story,” said Bernie Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton. “I think Americans are just generally more confident that this economy is real. That it’s sustainable. That it’s growing. Companies are therefore willing to ramp up employment.”

One of the bright spots is construction. Builders added 48,000 jobs last month.

That’s good news for another one of the professions hardest hit by the recession: architects. At the height of the recession, about 30 percent of all architecture jobs disappeared.

“Our profession is one of the lead indicators for both a downturn and a upswing. It seems like we’re the first ones to start laying off people, and we’re the last one to start hiring people,” said Paul Hanlon, a commercial architect in Minnesota who was out of work for almost four years during the recession.

His luck finally changed last month and his new job could be a good omen for other people looking for work. The Architecture Billings Index, a leading economic indicator of construction activity, has been rising steadily over recent months. It shows the strongest growth seen since November 2007. In particular, residential construction is up. Typically, that means business for commercial architects will improve in the next year.

“We’re a little more encouraged that times are going to get better, moving forward. That we’ve really seen the bottom and we’re starting to claw-out of that now,” said Kermit Baker, chief economist with the American Institute of Architects.

But that light at the end of the tunnel has come too late for some.

“A lot of my friends have actually segued out of the architecture profession,” said Hanlon, the Minnesota architect.

The recession forced many professionals to rethink their chosen career paths.

“They’ve struggled. They’ve tried. They’ve walked the pavement. Mailed the resumes. And they’ve simply given up,” said economist Baumohl.

Instead, Baumohl said many workers from all fields are getting retrained. Folks pack into vocational schools to learn new skills.

“There’s just no room for many of these schools to get new students. It’s quite extraordinary,” said Baumohl. “There’s also a lot of construction going on to build more vocational schools because the demand is just so high.”

Constructing more vocational schools? That means more work for architects.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 236,000 jobs last month, beating analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in four years. While construction, healthcare, tourism and retail were all pockets of strength, government hiring lagged behind.

Alan Krueger, chairman of  the White House Council of Economic Advisers, joined Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to break down the report and discuss the sequestration.

And, while more consumers want to buy food from small, local farms, those types of growers are having a hard time getting start-up money.

Heart disease, diabetes, cancer -- any of these chronic diseases can mean some seriously major drug bills.

So many people affected by HIV must have been relieved to hear that earlier this week, doctors announced that a two-and-a-half-year-old baby from Mississippi had been cured of the virus that causes AIDS. She was only the second person known to have been cured since the global pandemic erupted more than three decades ago.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1.2 million Americans are currently infected with HIV, which costs an estimated $400,000 to treat over a lifetime. How does the uncertainty of living with the disease and paying for life-saving medication play into financial choices? Leonardo Momplet, 35, has been HIV positive for nearly eight years. 

"I've had to cancel appointments and I've had to cancel procedures because I know I can't afford to pay for it and I don't want to be in a position where I'm drowning from medical bills. You really have to choose. I might have all these things that are wrong with me, but the ones that aren't life threatening I have to push aside," says Momplet. "Keeping me alive costs a whole lot more money than I'm making."

Before his diagnosis, Momplet says he was a poor manager of his money, which he attributes to having immigrant parents.  He has experienced working low-wage jobs and having to figure out how to get treatment for HIV without health insurance.

"HIV has taught me to budget, it's taught me a lot of things," he adds.

To hear the rest of Momplet's story, click play on the audio player above.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 236,000 jobs last month, beating analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in four years.

Alan Krueger, chairman of  the White House Council of Economic Advisers, joined Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to break down the report and discuss the sequestration.

On the U.S. job market:

Krueger: We still have too many Americans unemployed, we still have a middle class that has been under stress for some time. Improving the recovery, making sure that the recovery continues, making sure that the economy continues to make good middle class jobs, remains the president's North star.

On the sequestration:

Krueger: As the president has said repeatedly, the sequester which took effect early in March is bad policy. I think people across the political spectrum will look at it and think it is bad policy. It imposes a set of indiscriminate cuts which don't solve our long term deficit problem. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts [it] will shave economic growth by 0.6 percent and reduce job growth by around 750,000 jobs by the end of the year. The president has proposed a balance approach to put us on a sustainable fiscal path, which includes closing tax loopholes, includes reforming our entitlements, and a smarter set of spending cuts.

On whether the sequestration will be undone:

Krueger: The president has been reaching out to Congress. He made phone calls to many members of Congress this past week, he had a dinner with Senators from both sides, he met with ranking members of the House. So we are working to try to put us on a better fiscal path. It is going to take some time. We would like to see the Congress move back to regular order in terms of passing a budget.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 236,000 jobs last month, beating analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in four years.

Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial, joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the details behind the data and whether the new report will affect U.S. monetary policy.

If you're headed to the movies this weekend, you have your pick of the paranormal. There's demon possession, alien invasions, and of course, zombies. The mindless, murderous creatures have experienced a resurgence in pop culture in films like "Warm Bodies," a comedy with a zombie in the role of the romantic lead, and the TV show, "The Walking Dead," a smash in its third season on AMC. Maria Pramaggiore, a film professor at North Carolina State University, says she sees a link between horror movies and personal finance. Scroll over the photo above to find out what Pramaggiore says your favorite movie monster represents financially.

"These zombie films -- 'Warm Bodies' included -- are using death or the undead, that boundary, as sort of the ultimate expression of feeling disconnected, feeling powerless," says Pramaggiore.

Pramaggiore says classic zombies of the '20s and '30s were often exploited labor, working in places like sugar plantations. But more recent incarnations of zombies don't have jobs. They wander and threaten, and ultimately have their bodies destroyed. On the opposite end of the spectrum from zombies -- vampires.

"Vampires are sort of the upper echelon of the horror film world. They're aristocratic. They're European. They wear velvet," says Pramaggiore. "We almost see the vampire as the power of capitalism whereas the zombie figure is really the working class, the plebian. In terms of horror films, zombies are the lowest of the low. They always come in groups. They are in many senses the sort of great mass, the great unwashed, all of those negative terminologies that might be used to talk about the working poor, the working class."

Here's what Pramaggiore says classic horror creatures represent financially:

Zombies -- The walking dead are the embodiment of the "poor, working stiffs." Because zombies can't help what has happened to them, they are symbolic of everyday laborers. They don't call the shots, but rather are the ones trapped at the bottom of the pyramid, representing the dispensable work force.

Werewolves -- What happens when the wealthy stray outside their lifestyles of comfort? They're often exposed to experiences that can change them for better or worse.  In many horror films, people are bitten by werewolves when traveling abroad or to exotic locations. When these jet-setters return home, they have trouble adjusting. Werewolves represent the inability of the upper class to accept the primitive nature within all of us.

Ghosts -- Phantoms are obsessed with property: Just think about it, most ghosts haunt a specific house or piece of land.  They inhabit places in the earthly world with unfinished business. Haunted houses don't fetch much on the open market, after all.

Aliens -- Extra terrestrials are usually smart and powerful -- sometimes, they're even portrayed as superior to humans. Adjectives like those can be used to describe both aliens and your boss. In horror films, humans fear that aliens are more technically advanced and will take control of us. But because aliens don't recognize human emotions, they make decisions solely based on numbers and facts -- much like a middle manager.

Vampires -- The Donald Trump of movie monsters, vampires represent the pompous, upper crust of horror creatures. They are aristocratic, powerful, and often physically attractive (this is where they may differ from Mr. Trump).  They own property going back centuries and can amass wealth endlessly because they live eternally. These blood-suckers are known to be manipulative, magnetic, and nocturnal -- just like wealthy socialites.

In lush Escondido, California, Karen Archipley started an organic vegetable farm with her husband about six years ago.

 “We're looking at rainbow chard, and luciano kale...we harvest this every Saturday for Sundays farmers markets, and now we're selling more to the stores as well,” says Archipley.

 The whole farm is just three acres, but it provides well for the Archipleys, plus a few employees.

 “You can take the size of a parking lot, and make a very good living,” says Archipley, who also tells me about a nearby farm called Amber Waves Organics, run by Ray Shields.

 Shields is retired Navy.

 “This is the lifestyle that I want to pursue,” says Shields. “I want to have a sustainable, organic farm of such a size that I can provide employment opportunities for maybe eight, maybe ten veterans, if I can get them to come there.”

 But traditional farm loans aren't designed for his vision, says Elizabeth Ü, the author of the forthcoming book Finance for Food.

 “Financing either goes to very large scale industrial farmers, or primarily to farmers of commodity crops that aren't even intended for human consumption,” says Ü.

 The big banks that loan to big farms aren't interested in a half-acre of eggplant. And startup farmers like Shields look too risky for most small business loans.

 “A lot of beginning farmers go into credit card debt, because that is the one form of capital available to them,” Ü explains.  

 A new microloan program from the USDA aims to fill this gap. Small, beginning farmers can get up to $35,000, at about one percent interest.

 “I'm seeking to reach out to customers that may have never walked through our doors before,” says Val Dolcini, who heads the California Farm Service Agency, who adds that applications are coming in fast: “A microgreens operation in Sonoma county, a sheep rancher in Solano County, a peach grower in Fresno.”

 In Escondido, Ray Shields has put in his application, to grow organic peppers. He should get about 30,000 dollars, just in time for planting season.

As of Jan. 1, the wealthiest Americans -- those in the top 1 percent -- will have to pay more in federal income taxes. About 6 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center.  That’s the highest rate the 1 percent has paid since 1979. But federal income tax is just one part in the incredibly complicated tax system. Overall, the 1 percent are actually paying less in taxes than they were in ‘79 and the 1 percent looked very different then, than they do today.

Let’s start with the obvious differences. If you were a 1 percenter in 1979 you didn’t have a cell phone or an iPod. You probably had a tape deck that you used to listen to the number one album of the year, “52nd Street,” by Billy Joel. I would venture to guess that your favorite song was “Big Shot.”

From now on I will refer to 1 percenters as big shots. The average income for a 1979 big shot adjusted for inflation was about $413,000.

Jon Bakija was one of the authors of a paper titled “Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data." He says,  “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that all fed taxes were about 35 percent of income for people in the top one percent of the income distribution in 1979.”

That’s the same as the new rate for big shots in 2013. Today the average income of a big shot is $1.4 million.

So let’s say we bring a 1979 big shot into the present to buy a house  in one of the 10 wealthiest zip codes in 2013 America.

If the 1979 big shot follows the golden rule and doesn’t spend more than 30 percent of  gross income on the monthly mortgage payment, it would take the 1979 big shot 30 years to pay off the average house in one of those wealthy neighborhoods. It would take today’s big shot about nine years.

So why are big shots so much wealthier today? Partly it has to do with the people in the 1 percent who work in finance. “You know the Wall Street types the hedgefund types,” says Steve Kaplan, who teaches at Chicago Booth.

Statistically speaking, the percentage of people working in finance hasn’t changed much in the last 35 years. But those big shots who work in finance are earning in 3.5 times more of the nation’s income than they were in 1979.

And much of that income is not subject to federal income tax. When you factor all the taxes other than income -- like payroll, state and local -- the wealthiest 400 big shots in America today pay about 16 percent taxes on their income. Using those same calculations the average American pays 22 percent.

Tell someone that they're acting like a salesman, and they'll probably take it as an insult. Call 'em a used-car salesman, and a fist fight might ensue. The reality, however, is that we're all salespeople in one way or another. And if you're not selling yourself and your ideas, you may be missing the boat both in life and in work. One in nine people in the U.S. workforce are in sales. But Daniel Pink, author of "To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others," says the other eight in nine are in sales too -- they spend an enormous part of their time persuading, influencing, and trying to get people to part with resources like time and effort. Like it or not, we're all in sales now, says Pink.

"We're interacting with people. We want people to see things our way. We want to help people join us in making things a little bit different. And all of those are elements of sales. The thing is, in order to do it well, you don't have to be more sleazy, you have to be more human. You have to understand where people are coming from. You have to make things clear to people. You have to talk in ways that resonate with them and that they can process easily. So this idea that sales is somehow inherently slimy is a relic," says Pink.

Pink says one of the myths about selling is that extroverts make the best salespeople. In fact, strong extroverts and strong introverts are terrible salespeople, says Pink. The people who succeed most are in the middle and known as 'ambiverts.'

"[Ambiverts] know when to push. They know when to shut up. They know when to assert. They know when to hold back," says Pink. "In the distribution of introversion and extroversion in the population, women tend to be a little bit more ambiverted. Women test higher on empathy, which is a facet of attunement and women in general are better listeners."

Nowhere is selling more important than in finding a job. You’re selling your talent, your background and more to a potential employer.  Here are four tips from Daniel Pink on how to make the science of selling yourself work for you:

1. Emphasize potential. 

You might think that the key to landing a job is to emphasize your experience. And, yes, experience matters. But researchers at Stanford University and Harvard Business School have shown that potential can matter more. When people evaluate talent, they often find potential more interesting than accomplishment. Why? It’s uncertain. That uncertainty can lead them to think more deeply about the person they’re evaluating – and this more intensive processing can lead to their generating more and better reasons why the candidate is a good choice.  So don’t fixate on what you achieved yesterday. Emphasize the promise of what you could accomplish tomorrow.

2. Don’t hide every blemish.

Suppose your otherwise gleaming resume has a small scratch – a job that didn’t last very long or a project that went south. Your instinct might be to conceal it. But consider an alternative approach. Stanford University researchers have identified what they dub “the blemishing effect.” In short, adding a small dose of (honest) negative information can be more persuasive than presenting an exclusively positive picture. The minor negative serves as a contrast that makes the mostly glowing total portrait shine more brightly.  But beware: The researchers found that the negative information must follow the positive information, not the reverse. So mention getting fired from that barista job only after you’ve talked about your Nobel Prize.

3. Prepare for the only interview question that matters.

Job interviews, research shows, are surprisingly poor predictors of who’ll make a star employee. Indeed, only one interview question seems to have any predictive value: What do you know about this company? Use this to your advantage by being prepared to answer that question even – especially -- if it never comes up. What do you know about this company? is a proxy for conscientiousness. It demonstrates that you did your due diligence, which signals that you’ll be equally diligent when you take the job. What’s more, a smart response shows that you want to work for this particular outfit – not that you’re merely desperate for a job. Arrive armed with this answer and offer it up even if your interviewer never asks the question.

4. Be a problem-solver and a problem-finder

In any sales encounter, attuning yourself to the buyer – understanding her perspective and interests – is essential. In job hunting, that means understanding your prospective employer’s problem. Remember: The organization isn’t simply trying to fill a seat. It’s hoping to solve a problem – to get code written, pizzas delivered, or patients served.  But don’t stop there. Take a page from the work of the late University of Chicago social scientist Jacob Getzels and the legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In their landmark studies of creativity, they discovered that the very best artists were skilled problem finders. Instead of merely solving existing problems, these artists found new and intriguing ones to tackle. You can do the same: Identify problems your prospective employer doesn’t realize that it has – and you can be an artist of the job search.

Daniel H. Pink is the author of To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others.

This week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average partied like it was 1999, which was the first time the index first closed above both 10,000 and 11,000. But is the financial gravy train going to keep chugging now that we're once again in record territory? Nearly all of us have skin in the game -- our retirement funds, our kids, college funds. Should we be rethinking our investment strategies with the Dow above 14,000? And if we've been on the sidelines, is it too late to get into stocks? To answer those questions, we're joined by Ken Winans, a portfolio manager and founder of Winans International.  

"The markets are moving in a positive direction and there's an awful lot of really good companies that are doing very well right now," says Winans.

Some analysts say we are at the outset of an enormous bull run, so should investors rethink their allocation between stocks and bonds? Go a little heavier in stocks at the moment?

"Yes. Not to be in equities in the long term and not to be in good companies is technically a mistake. Now, you can find corporate bonds out there that are paying 5, 6, 7 percent. For a lot of retirees or people nearing retirement, I think that makes a lot of sense because you will need income when you retire. If you're young and you've missed the bond market rally and you are looking at where [to] put new money, I think you have to lean toward equities," says Winans.

Winans says it's not too late for people to jump back into the market, but he warns that nothing goes straight up. Plus, there's also a seasonal issue within the markets. In April, people will have to pay some large tax bills. Winans says he wouldn't be surprised to see people have to sell some of their stocks to pay those bills -- so there could be a temporary lull going into April. And the continuing budgetary problem could impact the markets as well.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit yet another all-time high -- and the world is following suit. Global shares are at their highest level since June of 2008, thanks to strong market performance in France, Germany, the U.K., and Japan.

The BBC's Economics Correspondent Andrew Walker joins Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to take stock of markets around the world.

Who is tech? It's a question we're asking all this week as we explore the role of women in the tech industry.

Jessica Lawrence is the director of NY Tech Meet Up, which brings together techies on a regular basis to share ideas and network. Lawrence joined Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to discuss the tech community in New York and whether or not the tech world is a boy's club.

Today is the start of the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, TX. What was first known as an indie music gathering and then a music and film festival, starts out this year as very much an interactive, startup, new media hotspot.

"In terms of industry presence, meaning paid registrants, we are now bigger than South by Southwest music," says Hugh Forrest, director of SXSW Interactive.

And with the growing numbers comes growing clout, according to Forrest, who credits a budding tech “cool factor” for the conference’s success.

"Geeks are the new rock stars," he says. "When Mark Zuckerberg gets married it's covered in People. When Steve Jobs dies, it’s like John Lennon dying."

So how do you tell the tech rock stars from the indie music rock stars? Louis Black, one of the original founders of SXSW and editor of the Austin Chronicle, says when you meet a festival-goer, listen to how they talk about funding their creativity.

"Whereas the music and film people [talk] passively about fundraising, all the Interactive people [talk] about what money they have just gotten and what they are going to do with it," says Black.

To hear more about the South by Southwest Interactive, click on the audio player above.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 236,000 jobs last month, beating analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7 percent, its lowest point in four years. 

While construction, healthcare, tourism and retail were all pockets of strength, government hiring lagged behind.

"But not as a result of the sequester," says Julia Coronado, chief economist with investment bank BNP Paribas. "It was all on the state and local side."

In the coming months, analysts will continue to watch for the effects of the mandatory across-the-board federal spending cuts, which kicked in March 1.

Coronado says that while February's report showed a healthy gain in jobs, it also revealed a drop in labor force participation.

"In particular, young people gave up the search [for jobs] -- that's not the way we want to make progress.”

To hear more about the U.S. job market and the Labor Department's latest report, click on the audio player above.

Girl Scouts and Wiffle Ball players may be happy about the Transportation Security Administration's big announcement this week that, starting in late April, passengers will be allowed to carry small pocket knives and certain sports equipment on to planes, after those objects were banned in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But flight attendants are decidedly unhappy about the announcement. 

“It’s a bad idea,” says Veda Shook, President of the Association of Flight Attendants. She says under the new rules, which would allow knives less than 2.36 inches long and a half inch wide, a passenger could still “do some serious damage.” Shook, who is a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines, also questions the need for the rule change. “It's not like there's this outcry to bring knives on board,” she says. 

The TSA declined an interview, but issued a statement saying the new rules will allow them to "better focus their efforts on finding higher threat items such as explosives."

That logic makes sense to Doug Laird, an airport security consultant and former director of security for Northwest Airlines. 

“You can’t protect against everything,” Laird says. “I would much rather see the TSA trying to find the components of IED's than worrying about looking for a Swiss Army Knife.”

Still, flight attendants are taking their case to Capitol Hill, and have the support of federal air marshal and law enforcement groups. 

As for the Wiffle Ball bats, Flight Attendant Association president Shook says she isn’t concerned with bringing them back in to the plane cabin -- unless, she jokes, she had to “actually hit a Wiffle Ball with one.” But Shook objects to lumping a lightweight plastic bat into the same category as something she worries could be used as a weapon against flight attendants and passengers. 

“It’s a distraction,” Shook says, “intended to take our eye off the blades that are coming back on board.”

See the TSA's new guidelines in the slides below (via TSA):

On a recent chilly afternoon in New York, a healthy crowd is strolling along The High Line in Chelsea, a park built on an old elevated rail line. 

“It’s just such a nice walk,” says tourist Helen Crestwell. “I love all the artwork, what they’ve done with the gardens.”

The High Line is dotted with sculptures and murals, which echo Chelsea’s vibrant art gallery scene at street level. Those galleries helped transform Chelsea, on Manhattan’s west side, into a desirable neighborhood.

“In the mid 90s, the galleries started to flee Soho as rents approached $50 a square foot, says Stuart Siegel of commercial real estate firm CBRE. “Chelsea was basically a seedy warehouse area.”

Seedy but affordable. Since then though, Siegel says rents have gone up 10-fold and many galleries are now being pushed out. Galleries like Schroeder Romero, which just closed its doors. Owner Sara Jo Romero remembers the feeling of unity among gallery owners when she opened the gallery with Lisa Schroeder in 2006.

“We all thought it would be wonderful to all kind of band together and be on one block together,” Romero says.

It was wonderful. And when the High Line opened in 2009, the galleries thought it would be a boon, says Lisa Schroeder.

“We were really excited. The whole neighborhood started to change because of The High Line, and we thought we were going to be part of that revitalization,” she recalls. “It turned out that didn’t happen for a lot of us middle-tier galleries. We just became priced out."

Their rent doubled, and it didn’t help that galleries found themselves competing for space with New York’s booming tech scene. Stuart Seigel says that really took off after Google bought a building in Chelsea two years ago.

“The Google effect has had an enormous impact on the market in Chelsea. There are thousands of companies that want to be near Google,” he says.

As for the art scene, some galleries are migrating again -- this time to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Updated (10:10am EST): The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in February, and the unemployment rate declined to 7.7 percent. Job gains were broad-based: in construction, retail, health care, professional services, and hospitality. Government shed another 10,000 jobs, primarily at the state and local level.”

Economists expect a status-quo jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning -- 150,000 to 175,000 jobs added in February, depending on which economist you check with, and unemployment sticking around 7.9 percent. That would be, more or less, the same slow, steady labor-market pulse we’ve seen for months. Any underperformance in February will probably be due to weather -- a powerful winter storm that hit the Northeast and might have delayed hiring -- rather than the result of government fiscal policy.

But what about the sequester, budget cuts, hundreds of thousands of layoffs and furloughs at government agencies and private contractors?

We’re not seeing employers dampen their hiring yet. But the job cuts will come, says John Canally, economic strategist at LPL Financial in Boston.

“750,000 [job losses] if the full extent of the sequester remains in place throughout the whole year,” says Canally, citing recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office. “That’s a pretty big number -- when you’re only creating 150,000 to 200,000 jobs per month, and you’re going to give back 60,000 or 70,000 [per month] of those because of the sequester -- that’s a big deal.”

And Canally says there’ll be leakage from people’s paychecks -- both direct government workers and those indirectly dependent on government contracts -- at everything from aerospace and defense companies, to hospitals, schools, and national parks.

“So if civilian and non-civilian employees are furloughed -- which means basically being told not to show up to work a couple days per month -- that might reduce hours," says Canally. "You might see more part-time work instead of full-time work.”

Weep for the well-paid government bureaucrat?

“I think the notion that it’s mid-wage professional government workers is one of the real misconceptions,” says Steve Bell of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He predicts that a lot of the jobs lost will be at private contractors -- some guy named ‘Joe,’ he says, whose construction firm is fixing a state courthouse roof, or whose tool-and-die shop makes parts for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet.

“And Joe’s either going to let people go -- mechanics and sheet-metal people -- or he’s going to not hire people he otherwise would hire,” says Bell.

Assuming Congress doesn’t revise or cancel the sequester budget cuts, we can expect to see these job losses start to show up in the employment numbers over the next several months.

Economists expect a status-quo jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning -- 150,000 to 175,000 jobs added in February, depending on which economist you check with, and unemployment sticking around 7.9 percent. That would be, more or less, the same slow, steady labor-market pulse we’ve seen for months. Any underperformance in February will probably be due to weather -- a powerful winter storm that hit the Northeast and might have delayed hiring -- rather than the result of government fiscal policy.

But what about the sequester, budget cuts, hundreds of thousands of layoffs and furloughs at government agencies and private contractors?

We’re not seeing employers dampen their hiring yet. But the job cuts will come, says John Canally, economic strategist at LPL Financial in Boston.

“750,000 [job losses] if the full extent of the sequester remains in place throughout the whole year,” says Canally, citing recent figures from the Congressional Budget Office. “That’s a pretty big number -- when you’re only creating 150,000 to 200,000 jobs per month, and you’re going to give back 60,000 or 70,000 [per month] of those because of the sequester -- that’s a big deal.”

And Canally says there’ll be leakage from people’s paychecks -- both direct government workers and those indirectly dependent on government contracts -- at everything from aerospace and defense companies, to hospitals, schools, and national parks.

“So if civilian and non-civilian employees are furloughed -- which means basically being told not to show up to work a couple days per month -- that might reduce hours," says Canally. "You might see more part-time work instead of full-time work.”

Weep for the well-paid government bureaucrat?

“I think the notion that it’s mid-wage professional government workers is one of the real misconceptions,” says Steve Bell of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He predicts that a lot of the jobs lost will be at private contractors -- some guy named ‘Joe,’ he says, whose construction firm is fixing a state courthouse roof, or whose tool-and-die shop makes parts for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet.

“And Joe’s either going to let people go -- mechanics and sheet-metal people -- or he’s going to not hire people he otherwise would hire,” says Bell.

Assuming Congress doesn’t revise or cancel the sequester budget cuts, we can expect to see these job losses start to show up in the employment numbers over the next several months.

L.A. Times consumer columnist David Lazarus tackles your questions this week.

Elizabeth from Brookfield, Vt., recently had her credit card compromised. She went through the drill, got a new card in short order, but then got a letter from the card issuer saying her credit limit is being lowered to reflect her spending. But might that impact her credit score?

Lazarus says Elizabeth deserves kudos for understanding the debt-to-credit ratio. In other words, how much you are actually borrowing versus how much you can borrow (i.e. how much credit you have). "The best rule of thumb here is, if you keep that ratio to around 30 percent, give or take, with plenty of head room, creditors [will be happy]," says Lazarus.

Lazarus says if her credit limit comes down, the amount of head room she will have above her borrowing will shrink. Thus, her debt-to-credit ratio will get bigger -- and she will look like more of a risk to her creditors. He advises her to look into whether she can opt out of having her credit limit lowered, and maintain the higher credit limit.

For more advice -- including how to deal with an elderly person's big debt -- click play on the audio player above.