December turned out to be a very strong month for new jobs, with a pair of parallel government surveys painting a bright picture for employment. The Labor Department's survey of households finds the unemployment rate in December dropping 0.1 percent to just 4.3 percent. The survey of payrolls finds 378,000 net new jobs were added during the month, a lot stronger than the experts had been predicting. This helped drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 105 points. Marketplace's New York editor Michelle Brier has the story.
Analysts say the nation's labor situation is as good as the numbers look.
Try hiring one. The unemployment rate for high school graduates is under 4 percent. No matter how you shake this out, it's a very strong labor market, probably the best we've seen since the late 60's. More than 250 thousand factory jobs have been lost since March. Manufacturing has been declining and dropped another 13 thousand in December.