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Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Job growth was quick out of the gate in the new year, the government reported on Friday, as employers added a healthy 227,000 workers to their payrolls in January. But despite a surge of local minimum-wage increases in states across the country, wage growth was meager.

The official jobless rate rose slightly, to 4.8 percent, but for good cause: More people were lured back into the work force.

“The labor market started 2017 on the front foot,” said Carl R. Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust. “This is a good, good number.”

The downside, he added, was a monthly 0.1 percent increase in average hourly earnings, bringing the year-over-year average back down to “its disappointing 2.5 percent trend.”
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“We’re still continuing to see wage pressure as the candidate market continues to shrink,” said Amy Glaser, senior vice president of Adecco Staffing USA, which has 300 branch offices. In addition to the omnipresent hunger for engineers, Ms. Glaser said there is a demand for those with middle-level trade skills like welding that fell into disuse during the recession, as well as entry-level warehouse and light assembly workers.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2017 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.