Unemployment Remains At Suddenly "Historically Low" 4.5%

Thanks, Nancy!

mployers stepped up hiring last month, boosting payrolls by a healthy 167,000 and keeping the unemployment rate steady at a still historically low 4.5 percent. Workers' wages grew briskly.

The latest snapshot of the nation's employment climate, released Friday by the Labor Department, showed that the jobs market ended 2006 on a strong note and provided fresh evidence that the troubled housing and automotive sectors aren't dragging down employment across the country.

The tally of new jobs added to the economy last month exceeded analysts' forecasts for a gain of around 115,000 and was the best showing since September. Analysts were predicting the politically sensitive jobless rate would remain unchanged from November, which it did.

"This is a good report for the American worker," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.

For all of 2006, the nation's unemployment rate dropped to a six-year low of 4.6 percent as the economy added 1.8 million jobs. In 2005, the unemployment rate averaged 5.1 percent.

The average of all of 2006 was 4.6%. Which isn't surprising, as the rate has been between 4.4% and 4.7% all frigging year. It hit the 4.4% mark once, in October. So most the time it's been 4.5% and 4.6%.

Now we're told that that number is "historically low." Who knew?

I guess it wasn't the sort of news worth reporting before the elections.

Also Novermber's and October's supposedly bad payroll numbers were increased by 29,000 all told. That, of course, won't be mentioned on Brian Williams tonight.

This post... would have been timely when I wrote it, which was around ten hours ago. Got stuck in the queue as a draft.

Oh well.

posted by Ace at 09:14 PM

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