In November, the BLS initially said the economy added 211,000 jobs – a “healthy pace”, as NPR’s Marilyn Geewax put it.
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The Federal Reserve’s optimism about the USA labor market contributed to its December decision to raise its benchmark interest rate for the first time in almost a decade. Steady hiring and unemployment supports that view. Without stronger wage gains, it will be hard for inflation to move back toward the Fed’s 2% annual target.
China’s major stock indexes regained some ground on January 8 after Beijing ditched a circuit-breaker mechanism that halted trading twice this week and had been blamed for exacerbating the market selloffs it was created to limit.
As it has been for multiple years now, the strong report was a welcome respite for the U.S. economy after uncertainty in other areas. And falling oil prices and weak global demand are holding consumer inflation at historically low levels.
The bulk of US employment gains previous year occurred in private service industries. Some of the strongest job growth in 2015 came from professional and business services with 605,000 jobs, health care with 474,7000 jobs, and food and drinking services with 357,000 jobs. Half of those were temporary positions, jobs that tend to pay less and thus may have dragged on wage figures. Construction added 45,000 jobs, down from 48,000 added in November.
The transportation sector with the highest employment increase over the busy holiday shipping season was couriers and messengers, which had 625,300 jobs in December, compared to 610,200 in November.
However, one struggling American industry continues to bleed jobs: mining. Sales of newly built homes jumped almost 15 percent in 2015 and helped spur building and construction hiring: Construction companies added 215,000 jobs a year ago, a 3.4 percent gain.
The labor force expanded in December.
The Labor Department says the unemployment rate remained 5 percent for the third straight month, as more Americans started looking for work and found jobs.
The unemployment rate in the country stayed flat at 5.0% which, when combined with the fact that new jobs have been created, shows the number of people searching for jobs in the United States has altered.
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Another bright spot was that black workers had an impressive month and year of jobs gains after suffering the most during the recession and recovery.
