4 key takeaways from the jaw-dropping January jobs rep
Friday's employment market in America surprised observers by roughly three times and proved their dire predictions of a recession to be completely unfounded.
The mainstream figure among economists earlier this week was that the US economy most likely added approximately 185,000 jobs in January.
That would have been a significant improvement, still higher than the pre-pandemic average.
However, the economy had other plans, creating more than 500,000 new jobs in January.
Here are the report's three most important conclusions. Wall Street economists were surprised by the report.
The following headlines, which appeared at 8:30 AM ET on Friday, shocked economists: Last month, America added 517,000 jobs.
In contrast to expectations, the jobless rate decreased from 3.5% to 3.4%. Since just before the moon landing, it hasn't dropped so low.
Other notables include the fact that, after modifications, America added 4.8 million jobs in 2017. That's a 300,000 increase from the previous estimate.
The leisure and hospitality industry led the way in adding jobs. Over expectations, wages increased by 4.4% from a year ago.