Strong Hiring and Fed Chief’s Reassurance on Rates Delight Investors

A blockbuster jobs report and reassuring comments from the Federal Reserve chairman reminded investors Friday to relish, at least for now, the economy’s undeniable strengths.

Markets reacted buoyantly, after lurching for weeks over a faltering outlook at home and signs of a global slowdown.

The Labor Department report showed one of the strongest months of job gains in the last decade, with employers adding 312,000 to payrolls in December. Wages, which had been lagging until recently, showed impressive gains.

Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chief, cheered the report, while offering assurances that policymakers would not move quickly to raise interest rates. Investors had been concerned that additional rate increases would weigh on growth. “2018, by so many measures, was a good year for the United States economy,” he said at an economic conference in Atlanta.

He also sought to ease concerns about the stability of the central bank. When asked whether he would resign if President Trump asked him to, Mr. Powell simply said, “No.”

“It’s an unequivocally phenomenal report all the way around,” said Ellen Zentner, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley. “Anyone that finds something negative in this report is simply cherry picking.”

But the latest report comes in the context of flashing yellow lights elsewhere, which Mr. Powell acknowledged on Friday. There is an unresolved trade war with China, a nation already contending with an economic downturn that could dampen global demand. In the United States, there is a slump in the housing sector, with hints that the auto industry could be next.

This week, Apple cut its revenue forecast for the first time in 16 years, citing flagging iPhone sales in China. Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on CNN that Apple would not be the only victim of tensions with Beijing.

“There are a heck of a lot of U.S. companies that have a lot of sales in China that are basically going to be watching their earnings be downgraded next year until we get a deal with China,” Mr. Hassett said.

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