145 jobs were created in the USA in December: in what areas were vacancies added

Economists had expected the Employment Report for December to show steady employment growth and steady wage growth compared with November, when 266 jobs were created in the United States. But the pace was much more restrained, writes CNBC.

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U.S. employers closed out the year by adding 145 jobs in the final month, with business growing at a more modest pace in the weeks leading up to Christmas than in the previous comparable period. The US Department of Labor reported that the unemployment rate in the United States remained stable at 000%.

New jobs appeared in the areas of retail, healthcare, leisure, but fell in mining, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing.

Monthly employment gains averaged about 2019 in 176, the slowest pace of job growth since 000, although it was more than enough to keep unemployment from rising.

Equities were only marginally higher, with the Dow Jones crossing the 29 mark and then dropping to 000. The S&P 28 and Nasdaq also moved slowly higher.

Wage growth has been slowing since 2019, indicating some slowdown in the labor market, despite the lowest unemployment rate in half a century. Average hourly earnings rose 2,9% in December from a year earlier, the slowest pace of growth since the summer of 2018.

“Healthy employment but weak wage growth is not the news workers want to hear,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. “The labor market is tightening, wages grew by only 2,9% last year, and this once again confirms that something has changed dramatically in the economy.”

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Some economists had expected that wage figures and growth could be higher than forecast because the US economy was slightly stronger than expected.

“I think it's going to be better than the market is suggesting,” Drew Matus, chief market strategist at MetLife Investment Management, said shortly before the report.

“Until businesses start laying people off, I don't see U.S. growth fluctuating much. We are still at the stage where we are hiring a lot of people,” he added.

Matus said economists may have underestimated job creation due to the impact of the General Motors strike on job data for the past two months.

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Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, added: “Today's report was a microcosm of an entire decade of the 2010s. Mid-term job growth and disappointing wage growth are a long story.”

The sectors producing goods had a modest month amid the year in which the trade war was fought. In December, the production sector lost 12 jobs, but added 000 over the year.

However, since manufacturers account for a declining share of the wider labor market and only about 12% of US economic activity, problems in this sector will not have a major impact on the overall job creation in the country.

Last year, professional and business services, as well as the leisure sector, showed a significant increase in the number of jobs: each of these areas created about 390 new jobs. Given that online shopping continues and develops, job growth in transportation and storage was twice as high as that of retailers losing jobs.

“Consumer spending remained strong, largely because American households' cash balances are looking very healthy,” said Julia Pollack, labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “These resilient engines of economic growth just keep going.”

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