United States job market is much stronger than Trump lets on

Friday’s jobs report marks the first time that the Bureau of Labour Statistics released its employment number for the United States since President Donald Trump took office.

Ryssdal’s hypothesis gained supporting evidence when, 39 minutes after Trump finished his tweetstorm, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published its monthly jobs report, showing the national unemployment ticked up to 4.8 percent in January. The headline U3 unemployment rate rose to 4.8% from last month’s 4.7%; expectations had been for a steady rate of 4.7%.

Trump was a harsh critic of the government’s monthly job’s report during the election campaign. That means the BLS’s initial estimate of jobs added in January could be revised wildly in one direction or the other.

“The low labor force participation rate truly, we believe, is a disconnect and indicates a disconnect between the general unemployment rate, and true unemployment rate”, Job Creators Network President Alfredo Ortiz told InsideSources. Annual wage growth slowed to 2.5%, down from December’s 2.8%, signaling no acceleration in wage pressures.

The big disappointment in the report was wage growth. Numerous new jobs were in construction and retail shops. The labor-force participation rate also rose by 0.2 percentage point in January to 62.9%. The increase in the size of the workforce helped push the unemployment slightly higher to 4.8 percent, up from 4.7 percent in December.

Spicer did say he’s “not a liberty to parse the BLS” but Trump is “pleased with the numbers” from the Friday jobs report. Still, the numbers reflect hiring and firing decisions made in the immediate run-up to inauguration, when executives were weighing the likely effects of Trump’s policies. The U.S. added 227,000 jobs last month, the strongest gain since September and higher than the average monthly gain in 2016. “Job gains occurred in retail trade, construction, and financial activities”.

The data is seen as painting a positive picture for the economy while also allowing the Federal Reserve to leave interest rates unchanged next month. “We rate the claim trousers on Fire”. That runs contrary to the continued overall improvement in the job market and the fact that 19 states increased their minimum wages on January 1. Having just opted to keep rates steady, the central bank will get to examine February employment data before the mid-March meeting.

Digging deeper into the latest release, durable goods firms added 6,000 workers in January; however, there were 1,000 fewer workers employed among nondurable goods manufacturers.