The American economy added 252,000 new jobs last month, 90,000 of which were needed to keep up with population growth. This means that net job growth clocked in at 162,000 jobs, which is not quite as good as last month but still not bad. Virtually all of this growth was in the private sector, yet another sign that the recovery is finally motoring along at a steady if unspectacular rate.
But the news was not all good. The headline unemployment rate fell from 5.8 percent to 5.6 percent, but this was mostly because of people dropping out of the labor force. Wage growth was also disappointing. Last month’s wage increases, which I was skeptical about, were entirely washed away. Earnings for nonsupervisory workers actually dropped to slightly below their October levels.
Overall, this jobs report is decent news, but hardly great. Until we start to see steady employment growth and steady wage growth, the labor market still has a lot of slack no matter what the headline unemployment rate is. Given this, in addition to possible headwinds in the rest of the world, the Fed needs to continue to keep interest rates low for quite a while longer. It’s not yet time to tighten.
