Payrolls surged by 256,000 last month, beating the 155,000 forecasted by analysts and up from 212,000 in November, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The jobless rate dropped to 4.1% percent from 4.2%, one-tenth of a point below expectations.
The Jan. 10 jobs report marks the last monthly employment snapshot of outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration.
“Although I inherited the worst economic crisis in decades with unemployment above six percent when I took office, we’ve had the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years with unemployment at 4.1 percent as I leave,” Biden said in a statement regarding his administration’s performance.
“This has been a hard-fought recovery,” he added.
Average hourly earnings picked up 0.3% from the month before in December to $35.69, slightly lower than economists expected. From a year ago, wages were up 3.9%. The average workweek remained unchanged at 34.3 hours.
“American exceptionalism is the primary takeaway from one of the more remarkable years in labor market dynamics over the past half a century,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the accounting and consulting firm RSM, told the New York Times.
Employment ticked up in health care (up 46,000), leisure and hospitality (up 43,000), government (up 33,000), social assistance (up 23,000), and retail (up 43,000). Retail is up after a losing 29,000 jobs in November, according to the BLS report.
“It is hard to say anything negative about the details of this report,” Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at the investment banking firm Jefferies, told the NYT.
Among the unemployed, permanent job losers declined by 164,000 to 1.7 million
in December, about the same as the same period in 2023. The number of people on temporary
layoff, at 862,000, changed little over the month and over the year, according to the BLS report.
In December, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) changed little at 1.6 million but is up by 278,000 from a year earlier. The long-term unemployed
accounted for 22.4 percent of all unemployed people in December.
“The number of people employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.4 million, changed
little in December and is little different from a year earlier. These individuals would
have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had
been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs,” per the report.
