Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of about 185,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in January. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market managed to do much better than that. CNBC reported:
Job growth posted a surprise increase in January, demonstrating again that the U.S. labor market is solid and poised to support broader economic growth. Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 353,000 for the month, much better than the Dow Jones estimate for 185,000, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The unemployment rate held at 3.7%, against the estimate for 3.8%.
What’s more, while January’s jobs report showed employers adding 353,000 positions last month, we also learned that wage growth continued to outpace inflation, and the unemployment rate remained at 3.7%. In fact, the jobless rate has been below 4% for 24 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.
Also note, the jobs report that comes every year in early February is especially notable because it includes revisions for all of the previous year. With this in mind, we now know that 3.05 million jobs were created in 2023 — well above the previous 2.7 million estimate.
As for the politics, let’s circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the United States’ economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.35 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created roughly 15.1 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years.
In recent months, Republicans have responded to developments like these by pretending not to notice them. No one should be surprised if GOP officials keep the trend going today.
For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade, newly updated to reflect the latest data revisions:
2013: 2.3 million
2014: 3 million
2015: 2.7 million
2016: 2.3 million
2017: 2.1 million
2018: 2.3 million
2019: 2 million
2020: -9.3 million
2021: 7.3 million
2022: 4.8 million
2023: 3 million
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
