Hiring Accelerated With 353,000 Jobs Added in January

Jobs report shows unemployment was 3.7% as the labor market defies predictions of a significant slowdown.

Jobs growth far outstripped economists’ expectations in January, the latest surprise delivered by a labor market that has repeatedly defied predictions of a significant slowdown.

Employers added a seasonally adjusted 353,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, the strongest in a year. December’s payroll gains were revised upward to 333,000 from 216,000, suggesting that higher interest rates haven’t cooled hiring as much as economists had previously thought.

Friday’s payroll report likely keeps the Fed on track to hold interest rates steady near a 23-year high at its next meeting, March 19-20, as officials wait for more evidence that a recent trend of lower inflation continues.

“This is a good situation. Let’s be honest. This is a good economy,” Powell said on Wednesday at a news conference. “We do expect growth to moderate. Of course, we have expected it for some time, and it hasn’t happened.”

Jobs reports for January have been somewhat hard to read since the onset of the pandemic. In the past two years, job gains were well above what economists had expected, but there was speculation that the numbers might have been exaggerated by shifts in seasonal hiring patterns.

Annual revisions to population estimates can also make it difficult to compare January’s unemployment rate with last year’s numbers.

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