U.S. hiring was solid in January as the unemployment rate hovered at its lowest level in 17 years and wage growth picked up to its strongest pace since the recession.
Despite a strong month, with 200,000 jobs added, the pace at which the economy is adding jobs has been slowing somewhat over the past three years. The number of jobs is up 1.5% from a year ago.
Hourly wages were up 2.9% from a year ago, the strongest annual gain since June 2009. Weekly, wages were down slightly, reflecting that on average people worked fewer hours.
The share of Americans in the labor force, that is, people who are either working or looking for work, was unchanged in January at 62.7%. The share of the population that was working was unchanged at 60.1%.
Among workers ages 25 to 54, when decisions to participate in the labor market are less influenced by education or retirement, participation and employment is generally much higher. Both rates declined slightly in January. The labor-force participation rate of such people was 81.8% and their employment rate was 79%, each down by 0.1 percentage point from December.
The overall unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1% in January. Broader measures, such as those that include workers who are so discouraged they’ve stopped looking for work or part-time workers who want a full-time job, climbed slightly. The broadest rate of underemployment rose to 8.2% in January from 8.1% in December.
Unemployment rates have generally trended lower for workers of all races and genders over the past eight years.
Unemployment rates rose for black and Hispanic workers in January. The black unemployment rate, which had been at a record low 6.8% in December, climbed to 7.7% in January. The rate is volatile, and could reverse again next month, but for now it means that the unemployment rate for the black population is no longer lower than it was for most of the year 2000 (the previous period of record lows).
Job gains have remained concentrated in a few sectors of the economy, especially health care, professional and business services and the leisure and hospitality industry. Those three sectors account for about half of the job growth over the past year.
Unemployment rates have been generally falling for workers of all education levels. Last month, the unemployment rate fell slightly for workers with some college and workers with less than a high-school education, while rising slightly for those with only a high-school degree.
The median spell of unemployment lasts 9.4 weeks, down from 25 weeks in the immediate aftermath of the recession. That number remains quite a bit higher than in the late 1990s or mid-2000s, reflecting a labor market that can still be unusually challenging for those who do become unemployed.
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from Real Time Economics http://ift.tt/2GFqXnn
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