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US unemployment hits record low.

US payrolls increased by 517,000 for Janu­ary, almost double Decem­ber’s total and nearly triple the

Economy index

con­sensus fore­cast of 185,000. Moreover, the unem­ploy­ment rate, at 3.4 per cent, is now the low­est for 53 years. The fig­ures, which ended five months in which job growth declined, led to a bond sell-off as investors reas­sessed whether the Fed would keep interest rates high for longer to bring infla­tion down. «Today’s data point to a labour mar­ket that is strength­en­ing, not a labour mar­ket that is weak­en­ing,» said Eric Wino­grad, chief US eco­nom­ist at Alli­ance­Bern­stein.

The cent­ral bank still hopes it will be able to bring infla­tion down to its 2 per cent tar­get without caus­ing a severe dis­rup­tion to the jobs mar­ket in the world’s biggest eco­nomy. The extent to which Janu­ary hir­ings out­paced the fore­cast led investors to sell the two-year Treas­ury, which tends to track rate expect­a­tions. The yield rose 0.14 per­cent­age points to 4.23 per cent, its highest since mid-Janu­ary. The Bur­eau of Labor Stat­ist­ics data also showed that aver­age hourly earn­ings rose at an annual rate of 4.4 per cent.

The BLS said that Janu­ary’s jobs gains were «wide­spread» with the leis­ure and hos­pit­al­ity sec­tor regis­ter­ing the most significant rise, at 128,000 pos­i­tions. In Decem­ber, the labour force par­ti­cip­a­tion rate, which tracks those employed or search­ing for a job, remained below its pre-pan­demic level, at 62.4 per cent.

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  1. Mira4 February 2023 at 14:23

    Wasn't expecting so many people to get jobs so quickly in the year. I'm glad this happened, but I wasn't expecting more than a third of these numbers for January.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Albert4 February 2023 at 15:54

      Don't know if this trend will keep up in the next 2-3 months but it's good to know so many people have a job now.

      Delete

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