By Zerbor @Adobe Stock

Amara Omeokwe and Chip Cutter of The Wall Street Journal are reporting that unemployment held at 3.7% last month and hiring was revised lower in prior months. They write:

Employers hired at a solid pace in December, capping a year of steady gains for a job market that continues to defy expectations and remains a bright spot in a gradually cooling economy.

The U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs last month with most industries increasing employment, the Labor Department reported Friday. That was larger than November’s gain of 173,000, and better than forecasters were expecting. For all of 2023, employers added 2.7 million jobs, a slowdown from 4.8 million in 2022, but a better gain than in the several years preceding the pandemic. […]

Friday’s report showed more than half a million fewer Americans were working or looking for work in December compared with November. The labor force lost an average of 149,000 people in the last three months of 2023.

2023 was “an exceptional year in terms of labor supply, and it’s hard to see that persisting,” Millar said.

Read more here.