Unemployment Rate May Have Bottomed, But Job Growth is Still in the Cards
Last month's job growth wasn't enough to push the official unemployment rate any lower than the reading of 5.0% it's been hovering at since October, but the 292,000 new jobs added in December was the second best month all year (and second only to the 307,000 newly-created payrolls in October). Though choppy the whole way through, we just finished our fifth year of net job growth.
We did not, however, finish our fifth year of progressive job growth. That is, fewer new positions were filled in 2015 than were filled in 2014, though more new positions were filled in 2014 than in 2013. It's a sign that the pace of job growth is slowing down even if we're still moving forward in terms of job creation.
Unemployment Rate Charts
It's not a major cause for concern. There are many who believe an unemployment rate of 5.0% is about as good as the labor market is going to realistically get. Any new additions from here are going to be even tougher to muster simply because the unemployed portion of the labor isn't truly interested in working or employers can't find a qualified person to fill specific roles.
Underscoring the notion that progress is still underway is the less touted data regarding the total number of working individuals in the U.S. and the percent of the total population that's working. Both hit multi-year highs again in December, with the latter breaking out of a slump it looked like it was in over the course of 2015. Specifically, the 143.24 million people we have working in the U.S. right now represents 59.5% of the civilian population.
Employment Totals Charts
The ongoing counterargument to these progressive numbers is simply that these jobs aren't necessarily the greatest -- or greatest paying -- jobs in the world, and this year's strong growth in the number of service jobs versus no measurable growth in manufacturing jobs underscores this argument. On a net basis though, the nation's economy is still moving forward. The better-paying manufacturing jobs will eventually rematerialize at our current pace of growth, particularly if the U.S. dollar can be reeled in let our multinational companies be price-competitive again.