Today’s Employment Situation Summary report was a stunning confirmation of the strength of the recovery. The January number of 467,000 was backed up with a total of 709,000 additional jobs not reported in November and December. Wages continued to rise 5.7% over the past year. In the face of Omicron stunning is the only word I can use.
This was a broad increase in jobs across the service sector. With 444,000 jobs in the private sector.
There really isn’t much to highlight in the data tables as everything was so even. But trends are becoming increasingly clear. Employers are focusing on retention. Temporary work continues to decline and with Omicron we saw a bump in work from home. Business chose to slow down and spread out work instead of losing workers. While the low end service worker component only saw a one cent raise, that was coupled with more assured hours and a consistent paycheck. Migration within the job market continues a roughly the same pace and indicates that existing workers are upgrading their situation as new workers flow in. This is an incredibly balanced and sustainable pattern especially when you couple it with the 6.6% increase in productivity. Wage growth is not really contributing to inflation yet, but the productivity gains are flowing towards wages faster then the recent past. That is a great place to be for sustained economic growth. That will change a bit as the pandemic moderates and the service sector recovery accelerates. Productivity in the service sector is a bit harder. That however will be masked a bit because the year over year inflation numbers will start to moderate in the spring.