The Labor Department said on Friday it was unclear how the severe snowstorms, which hit much of the country last month, had impacted payrolls. Jobs losses for December and January were revised to show 35,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

Analysts polled by Reuters had expected non-farm payrolls to drop 50,000 last month and the unemployment rate to edge up to 9.8 percent. The median forecast from the 20 most accurate forecasters also saw payrolls falling by 50,000, while the 10 most accurate economists predicted a 70,000 decline.

"This is encouraging news, indicating the recovery is still on track," said Gary Thayer, chief macrostrategist at Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis.

US stock index futures rallied, while yields on government debt rose. The US dollar rose against the euro.

Traders bet the stronger-than-expected number might encourage the Federal Reserve to begin lifting short term interest rates from near zero later this year. Trading in US short-term interest rate futures after the data was published showed investors thought the central bank would hike its benchmark interest rate by November.

"The emergency interest rate level is no longer warranted either for the markets or the economy," said Chris Rupkey, an economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York.

"The Fed is going to take out the scissors to its press statement. They will no longer be telling the global markets on March 16 that exceptionally low rates are needed for an extended period," he added, referring to the Fed's next policy-setting meeting.

Half of the job losses came from government workers, but that category is expected to see huge gains in the coming months as more workers are hired for the once-a-decade US census. In February, 15,000 temporary census workers were hired.

Analysts had feared that the heavy snowstorms that hit large areas of the United States during the survey week for the employment report would cause a huge drop in payrolls.

However, the department said while the winter storms might have affected its employment count, it was difficult to quantify the net impact.

"Nor do we know how new hiring or separations were affected by the weather. For those reasons, we cannot say how much February's payroll employment was affected by the severe weather," said Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Keith Hall.

The department noted that not every closure or temporary absence causes a drop in employment, because workers are counted as employed if they receive any pay during the survey period, even if it is for just an hour.

Moreover, it was unclear how many workers may have been added to payrolls in February for snow removal or repairs related to the storm, it said.

Unemployment is one of the toughest challenges facing President Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have dropped.

Obama and fellow Democrats worry voters could punish them in November congressional elections if no progress is made in putting Americans back to work as the economy emerges from its worst downturn since the 1930s.

Since the start of the recession, 8.36 million jobs have been lost. The labor market has been gradually improving and the pace of layoffs has slowed markedly from early 2009 when the economy was losing 750,000 jobs on average a month.

Manufacturing added 1,000 jobs in February, but construction payrolls fell 64,000 jobs. Temporary hiring added 48,000.

The average workweek for all employees slipped to 33.8 hours from 33.9 hours in January.

Job growth is crucial for the sustainability of the economic recovery that started in the second half of 2009.

Analysts worry that tepid consumer spending could result in the economy's growth sputtering when the impact of government stimulus and the rebuilding of inventories by businesses fades later this year.

President Obama said on Friday better-than-expected February jobless figures showed measures his administration took to boost the economy were working, but he said unemployment was still too high.

"This morning we learned that in February our economy lost an additional 36,000 jobs. Now this is actually better than expected considering the severe storms all along the East Coast are estimated to have had a depressing effect on the numbers," Obama said.

"Even though it's better than expected, it's more than we should tolerate," he said.

Meanwhile, the global recession has caused more men than women lose their jobs around the world, following a pattern already well established in the United States, according to research released on Friday.

Men held more of the jobs lost in nearly all the nations where executives were surveyed by Accenture, a management consulting firm.

In India, executives said 95 percent of their layoffs were men; in France men accounted for 71 percent of job losses. The survey, conducted between November 2009 and mid-February 2010, asked executives how many men and women had been fired or laid off in the preceding year.

Executives also fired more men than women in Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, it said. In the United States, men held 54 percent of jobs lost to women's 46 percent.

"In some cases the majority of the work force was men, so most men got impacted," said Nellie Borrero, who heads global human capital and diversity at Accenture. "It could also mean that companies were more vigilant in insuring that a lot of women would not be impacted." In the United States, men dominate industries hardest hit by recession, such as heavy manufacturing and construction, while women dominate less hard-hit fields such as health services and education, statistics have shown.

A different story on gender and job loss came from the Netherlands, where women accounted for 51 percent of jobs losses, Accenture said. In China the losses were split evenly between the genders.

Accenture surveyed 524 senior executives in medium to large companies in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.