Prior to the release of Friday’s jobs report, commentators on Bloomberg were giddy with excitement. Economists had been revising their employment forecasts upward over the past several weeks. Consensus expectations were that 175,000 jobs would be created in the month of December. So the commentators were asking and debating amongst themselves if we were about to see a major turning point in the US employment picture.
Unfortunately, job growth fell short of expectations. We did see 103,000 jobs created in December and our unemployment rate fell to 9.4%, its lowest level in 19 months. Government revisions also show that more people were hired in October and November than previously estimated. In fact, during the fourth quarter the economy added an average of 128,000 jobs per month. These are positives and point to signs of continued recovery, but not a major tuning point as had been hoped.
