U.S. adds 225,000 jobs in January as hiring speeds up, unemployment rises to 3.6%
The U.S. created a robust 225,000 new jobs in January to get off to a good start in 2020, reflecting surprising resilience in the labor market despite a contraction in manufacturing and softer economic growth.
The economy has added an average of 211,000 new jobs in the past three months, a marked acceleration from last fall and summer.
The unemployment rate edged up to 3.6% from a 50-year low of 3.5% as more people entered the labor force in search of work. The rate tends to rise if not all the new entrants find jobs right away, but it’s considered a sign of a strong labor market. An ultra-tight labor market has put more upward pressure on wages, though paychecks are still not growing as fast as they usually do when unemployment is so low. The increase in worker pay over the past 12 months rose slightly to 3.1%, but it sits below the postrecession peak of 3.5%.
Before the employment report, premarket trading pointed to a lower opening for the stock market. The increase in new jobs easily surpassed the 164,000 forecast of economists surveyed by MarketWatch. The construction industry, buoyed by lower mortgage rates and greater demand for new housing, led the way by adding 44,000 jobs. Health-care providers and hotels and restaurants both created 36,000 new jobs. Transportation companies added 28,000 workers, mostly package deliverers and warehouse stockers. And professional businesses hired 21,000 people. Employment in manufacturing, however, fell for the third time in the past four months. The industry shed 12,000 jobs as it struggles to recover from the trade war with China that dented exports in 2019.
Executives were hoping to see improvement in 2020 after the U.S. and China signed an interim trade deal, but the coronavirus has thrown a kink in those plans. The amount of money the average worker earns, meanwhile, rose by 7 cents to $28.44 an hour.
In an expected change, the government reduced its estimate of how many new jobs were created in 2019. Employment gains were revised down to 2.09 million from an original 2.11 million.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-adds-225000-jobs-in-january-as-hiring-speeds-up-unemployment-rises-to-36-2020-02-07