The U.S. job market is now in high gear. During the three month period beginning November first of last year, employers hired more than one million net new workers, the best performance over a three-month period since 1997.
In fact, more jobs were created in America in 2014 than in any year since 1999. Job growth has been broad-based, encompassing both blue collar industries like manufacturing and construction and white collar segments like professional services. Higher-paid segments have also exhibited strength, including financial companies and insurance providers, which added more than 22,000 jobs in January.
As pointed out by writer Nelson Schwartz among others, wage gains have been less impressive. Over the past year, average hourly earnings have expanded by 2.2 percent, but with the nation’s official unemployment rate now below 6 percent, there are many economists who believe that wage growth is poised to accelerate.
In January, unemployment expanded to 5.7 percent from 5.6 percent in December, but that turned out to be good news. Unemployment rose because more people jumped into the labor force by beginning job searches.
