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December Payrolls Round Out 2018 with Growth at a 3-Year High
Payroll growth in December handily exceeded expectations, with headline gains of 312,000 and a robust upward revision to the prior two months’ data of 58,000 (Table 1 and Chart 1). Average hourly earnings on a yearover-year basis rose from 3.13% to 3.15% between November and December, resulting in a 0.1% increase on a rounded basis. For all of 2018, aggregate job growth totaled 2.6 million, compared with a gain of 2.2 million jobs in 2017. (Even the beleaguered retail sector eked out an employment gain for the year.) Office-using employment grew by 2.1% in 2018 (vs. 1.7% in 2017 and 1.9% in 2016) suggesting that at least for now, a protracted pullback in growth doesn’t appear likely, at least if the current labor market is any indication.