December Jobs Report: +199,000

The December jobs report is out, and the U.S. economy created 199,000 net new jobs last month. That was well below expectations of 422,000.

The unemployment rate fell to 3.9%. That’s lower than where it was during every single month of the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

Average hourly earnings were up 0.6% last month and 4.7% for the whole year.

The broader U-6 employment rate fell 0.4% to 7.3%.

Job creation was highest in leisure and hospitality, a key recovery sector, which added 53,000. Professional and business services contributed 43,000, while manufacturing added 26,000.

The unemployment rate was a fresh pandemic-era low and near the 50-year low of 3.5% in February 2020. That decline came even though the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.9% amid an ongoing labor shortage in the U.S.

A more encompassing measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons slid to 7.3%, down 0.4 percentage point. Though the overall jobless rates fell, unemployment for Blacks spiked during the month, rising to 7.1% from 6.5%. The rate for white women 20 years and older fell sharply, to 3.1% from 3.7%.

“The new year is off to a rocky start,” wrote Nick Bunker, economic research director at job placement site Indeed. “These less than stellar numbers were recorded before the omicron variant started to spread significantly in the United States. Hopefully the current wave of the pandemic will lead to limited labor market damage. The labor market is still recovering, but a more sustainable comeback is only possible in a post-pandemic environment.”

Posted by on January 7th, 2022 at 11:58 am


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