There were only 74,000 jobs added to public and private payrolls in December, but the unemployment rate fell to a 5-year low 6.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday morning in a report that included several surprises for economists.
Our original post — Will Last Jobs Report For 2013 Offer Hopeful Signs For 2014? — previewed the news:
When the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases figures this morning about job growth and the unemployment rate in December, economists will sift through the data to see if the numbers add to the recent evidence of slow improvement in the labor market, NPR's Yuki Noguchi said on Morning Edition.
The BLS report is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. We'll be updating with highlights and reaction to the news. As we wrote Thursday, economists expect to hear that 195,000 or so jobs were added to public and private payrolls last month. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, likely stayed around November's 7 percent.
There's a growing sense among economists, Yuki said, that something of a "warm front" is sweeping across the economy and that job growth in 2014 might be able to continue at a 200,000-or-so monthly rate. If that happens, she added, the jobless rate could be down around 6 percent by year's end.
One caveat: As the Federal Reserve scales back on some of the stimulus it's been giving the economy, that could slow things down.
Our friends over at Planet Money, who track this sort of news all the time, offer this related post: Every Job In America, In 1 Graph.