The News
The US economy entered the new year with some of the best employment numbers in months.
US non-farm employment surged in December with 256,000 new jobs added, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The figure blew past the expected 155,000 new jobs and represented the highest monthly increase since March 2024.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate also ticked down to 4.1% in December, slightly lower than the forecasted 4.2%, which would have matched November’s number.
“This is a hot report,” Allianz Trade senior economist Dan North told CNBC. “You have to think that [Federal Reserve chair] Jerome Powell is breathing a sigh of relief in the sense that his job just got a little bit easier.”
The Federal Reserve’s rate cutting committee will meet later this month to decide whether to slash its federal funds rate for the first time this year.
Economists and Wall Street traders largely expect the central bank to pause on trimming rates this month, after lowering the borrowing rate three times at the end of last year.
“Inflation hasn’t been moving anywhere for months, so there’s no incentive to cut rates,” North said. “Now you get this [jobs report] so you don’t need to cut rates to stimulate the economy.”