"U.S. employers added a surprisingly strong 130,000 jobs last month, but government revisions cut 2024-2025 U.S. payrolls by hundreds of thousands. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The report included major revisions that reduced the number of jobs created last year to just 181,000, a third the previously reported 584,000 and the weakest since the pandemic year of 2020. The job market has been sluggish for months even though the economy is registering solid growth."
"Dreary numbers had been coming in ahead of Wednesday's report. Employers posted just 6.5 million job openings in December, fewest in more than five years. Weak hiring over the past year reflects the lingering impact of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to counter surging inflation, as well as Elon Musk's purge last year of the federal workforce. The chaos from President Donald Trump's erratic trade policies also made businesses less willing to hire."
U.S. employers added 130,000 jobs in January even as government revisions cut 2024-2025 payroll figures by hundreds of thousands. Revisions reduced last years job gains to 181,000, a third of the previously reported 584,000 and the weakest since 2020. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3% as the number of employed Americans rose and the number of unemployed fell. Healthcare accounted for nearly 82,000 new jobs, factories added 5,000, and the federal government shed 34,000. Average hourly wages rose 0.4% from December to January. Weak hiring over the past year reflects high interest rates, a federal workforce purge, and erratic trade policies; job openings and ADP data were weak.
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