U.S. hiring grew solidly but cooled some in February as employers added 311,000 jobs, while unemployment rose to 3.6%, the Wall Street Journal reported. Other recent figures point to a buoyant economy. Consumer spending jumped in January, and inflation firmed. Business activity picked up in February. A hot job market has emerged as one of the biggest economic surprises among many twists since the COVID-19 pandemic hit three years ago. With the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates to tame inflation, many economists had expected job gains would cool or even turn into losses by now. “The labor market’s definitely been stronger at this point than we would have thought maybe six months ago,” said Veronica Clark, economist at Citigroup. Large parts of the economy — including restaurants, hospitals and nursing homes — are driving the growth. Those service providers were hit hardest by social-distancing measures at the onset of the pandemic. Now, nearly three years later, they are hiring at a rapid clip as they find it easier to recruit and fill openings. The new jobs are more than offsetting cuts announced by huge employers such as Google parent Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Walt Disney Co. There are signs that strong hiring could continue. Employers had 10.8 million open jobs in January, down slightly from 11.2 million in December. The totals are nearly double the number of unemployed people seeking work, and still far above prepandemic levels. The economy’s recent pickup will delay Fed officials’ deliberations about when to pause rate increases, with officials and investors closely watching jobs and inflation figures. Investors are looking for clues about whether the Fed will raise rates by a quarter-percentage point, as it did last month, or a half-point, as it did in December. The next Fed rate policy meeting is March 21-22.