Jan. 08--The nation's payrolls increased by 292,000 jobs in December, eight years after the beginning of the 2007 recession that crippled America's economy.
The unemployment rate remained at 5.0 percent for the third month in a row, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday.
Not surprisingly, U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez, who will be visiting a manufacturing plant in Philadelphia next week, liked the report, as did Wall Street until concerns about the Chinese economy pushed the rising market down, as trading headed toward noon Friday.
"What we see from the data, the job train sped into the new year. We have to make sure every worker has a seat on the train," Perez said in a phone interview.
"What's notable about the job figures is not just the quantity of jobs, but the quality of jobs," he said. "At the beginning of the recovery, the jobs that come back first are the lowest paying jobs," but lately, he said, more family-sustaining jobs have been added.
Sectors which tend to pay more, including business and professional services and health care, added work.
While the news is positive, with hiring in nearly every industry sector, the report comes as the Philadelphia region is bracing for the impact of the loss of 1,700 jobs scheduled to be cut by DuPont Co. in January.
In the U.S., 7.9 million people remain unemployed, down from 8.7 million a year ago. Of them, one in four have been out of work for more than six months.
Perez said that the proportion was too high -- typically, when the unemployment rate is 5 percent, the number of long term unemployed is one in five, not one in four.
"The scale of long term unemployed is something we've never seen," he said.
Perez said that most of the recent gains in employment have been the result of the long term unemployed getting rehired.
Driven primarily by automotive sales, employment in retail was up.
But jobs were fewer in general merchandise stores and shops selling clothing, sporting goods and hobbies took a hit in December.
"The biggest issue that drove that was warm weather," Perez said, sounding like a typical retail analyst blaming the snow, or ice, or in this case, balmy weather in places like Buffalo where Perez grew up.
"Coat sales and things that were seasonal were in the tank," Perez said.
Nonstore retailers added employees, the Labor Department report said.
Most business activities saw increases and transportation and warehousing got a big bump upward.
Leisure and hospitality employment grew, but not jobs in gambling or amusement parks. The government, which had been shedding jobs, is now adding them, on federal, state and local levels.
In addition, the Labor Department revised payroll numbers for October and November upwards, adding a combined 50,000 more jobs.
In the interview, Perez pointed to another government report -- the weekly accounting of new claims for unemployment insurance.
In 2009, in the last official months of the recession, 600,000 laid off workers were applying for claims. On Thursday, the number was 277,000 -- the 43d week in a row below 300,000, and the longest streak since the 1970s.
"We haven't seen that in decades," he said.
Claims below 300,000 are generally associated with a healthy job market.
215-854-2769
@JaneVonBergen
___
(c)2016 The Philadelphia Inquirer
Visit The Philadelphia Inquirer at www.philly.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
0 Response to " Feds: Economy Added 292K Jobs Last Month "
Post a Comment