INSTANT VIEW 4-U.S. payrolls shrink again, Fed expands auctions

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. employers cut payrolls for a second straight month during February, slashing 63,000 jobs for the biggest monthly job decline in nearly five years as the labor market weakened steadily, a government report on Friday showed.

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TERM AUCTION FACILITY:

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Friday announced measures to ease liquidity pressures in stressed financial markets.

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KEY POINTS:

PAYROLLS: * The Labor Department revised January's jobs loss to 22,000 in from the 17,000 originally reported. It also said only 41,000 jobs were created in December, half the 82,000 originally reported. * The back-to-back January and February job losses were the first consecutive monthly declines since May and June of 2003. * The unemployment rate eased to 4.8 percent from 4.9 percent in January, but that was because fewer people were in the labor force. The department said the number of people in the workforce fell by 450,000 in February. * Economists surveyed by Reuters forecast 25,000 jobs would be added to payrolls last month. They had forecast that the unemployment rate would edge up to 5.0 percent. * Job losses were widespread. Some 52,000 jobs were lost in the manufacturing industries, the largest decline since July 2003 when 92,000 jobs were cut. Construction businesses eliminated another 39,000 jobs on top of 25,000 that were cut in January, a reflection of the housing industry's deepening woes.

TERM AUCTION FACILITY: * The Fed said it would increase amounts in its Term Auction Facility auctions March 10 and March 24 to $50 billion each, a rise of $20 billion from the amounts announced for each of these auctions. * The Fed also said it would initiate a series of term repurchase transactions that are expected to cumulate to $100 billion.

COMMENTS:

ADAM FAZIO, SENIOR CURRENCY STRATEGIST, CIBC WORLD MARKETS;

NEW YORK:

"This raises dramatically the chances of an inter-meeting rate cut . Already futures have moved to price in a more than 75 basis points cut and now it's looking at easing of a full percentage point. This just reinforces the trend that we have already seen. Euro has moved to an all-time high for two straight sessions and it's not even 9:00 am yet. Dollar/yen could threaten 100. Even the pound, sick as it is, is above $2.02. So the prognosis is sell dollars and buy gold as a hedge."

IAN SHEPHERDSON, CHIEF U.S. ECONOMIST, HIGH FREQUENCY

ECONOMICS, VALHALLA, NEW YORK:

PAYROLLS: "Grim, and note there was a net -46,000 revision to the previous three months."

"Private payrolls tanked 101,000 the third straight dip and the worst performance since March 2003, during the war in Iraq."