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WASHINGTON (AP) – US employers dismissed the partial government shutdown last month and proceeded with a wave of hiring in January, creating 304,000 jobs, the record number of jobs in almost a year.
The substantial gain announced Friday by the government illustrated the resilience of the job market after nearly a decade of economic expansion. The United States has now created jobs for 100 consecutive months, the longest of this type ever recorded.
The unemployment rate rose 3.9% in January, from 3.9% to 4% in January, mainly for technical reasons. the closure.
The government also abruptly revised Friday its forecast of growth in employment in November and December. Nevertheless, hiring has accelerated since last summer, an evolution that has surprised economists because hiring generally slows down when unemployment is so low.
"The overwhelming conclusion from today's numbers is that the US labor market has remained incredibly strong in early 2019," said Leslie Preston, senior economist at TD Economics.
Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, said that many federal workers and subcontractors probably left for part-time work during the 35-day shutdown. The ability of many of them to do so is in itself a sign of the strength of the job market, Swonk said.
Creating healthy jobs last month will allay some concerns raised by the US economy. Global growth weakens, the Trump administration is engaged in a trade war with China and rising mortgage rates have slowed home sales. These factors have led many economists to forecast slower growth this year compared to 2018.
However, strong hiring is expected to increase household incomes, leading to higher consumer spending, which would contribute to economic growth.
Most sectors of the economy reported strong job gains in January. Education and health care have created 55,000 jobs, retailers nearly 21,000, and professional and commercial services, which include higher paying engineering and architectural positions, 30,000.
Continuing demand for workers is pushing some companies to offer higher wages to attract and retain staff. Average hourly wages rose 3.2% in January compared with the previous year. This is just below the annual gain of 3.3% in December, which corresponds to October and November for the largest increase since April 2009.
Teresa Carroll, executive at Kelly Services, said her company had told many customers they had to pay more to find the workers they needed. Some employers are still reluctant to offer higher wages, which has made it more difficult for them to find and retain workers, she said.
"They have enjoyed a minimum wage growth of two decades in general," she said. "It's our job to educate our customers in the job market."
On a monthly basis, from December to January, wages have hardly increased. This is likely to prevent the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates in the coming months, economists said. President Jerome Powell said earlier this week that arguments in favor of a Fed rate hike have been weakening. Many economists and investors have taken this as a sign that an increase in rates is unlikely in the coming months.
Swonk warned that some quirks have probably inflated job gains last month. For example, some of the fired federal employees and contractors who worked part-time during the 35 days of government closures could have been considered to have two jobs in January. Now that the closure is over, these people will return to being considered as having only one job starting in February.
And for most of January, the weather was relatively warm in most of the United States, which probably boosted employment in construction. Builders created 52,000 jobs, the highest number in almost a year.
The strength of the labor market, however, encourages more people who are not working to start looking. The proportion of Americans who have a job or who are looking for one – which was unusually low since the recession that ended ten years ago – reached 63.2% in January, the highest level ever. high in more than five years.
Jessica Jacumin started a permanent job a month ago as a cook in an badisted living center in Augusta, Georgia, after working as a trainee. Previously, she was unemployed and did not particularly watch while she had been studying culinary arts at Helms College, for 18 months, an orientation school sponsored by Goodwill Industries.
Although Jacumin, 42, and her husband both have a pension in the Navy, her new job has provided much needed income and health insurance. This allowed their family to spend a little more freely.
"I am planning our first family vacation in three years," she said.
Jacumin, her husband and three children will travel to Hilton Head, South Carolina in July.
The partial halt of the government has caused 200,000 workers to be lost to 200,000 workers. But because these workers will eventually receive salary arrears, they were counted in the survey of companies generating monthly employment earnings.
But in a separate household survey used to calculate the unemployment rate, some of these people were counted as temporary unemployed. This is one of the main reasons why the unemployment rate has risen despite the good job gain.
Most economists have predicted that this closure would likely slow down economic growth in the first three months of this year. But some say that even companies that have lost revenue as a result of the closure have probably kept their staff, knowing that the closure would only be temporary.
The Congressional non-parliamentary budget office estimates that the closure slowed annual growth for the January-March quarter by about 0.4 percentage point, to reach a rate of 2.1%, but that this loss should lead to a rebound later this year.
The partial shutdown of the government delayed the release of a whole series of government data on the economy, including housing statistics, factory orders and growth in the fourth quarter.
The reports that have been published have been mixed. The Federal Reserve 's industrial production report showed that manufacturing output increased in December by the largest increase in nearly a year, boosted by auto production. But consumer confidence fell in January for a third consecutive month.
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