Economic Watch: Employment, Factory Orders Continue Growing
A sizeable gain in trucking employment helped the total number of job additions move higher in January, according to a new Labor Department report.
The trucking industry added 2,200 jobs in the first month of 2018 as the overall economy added a total of 200,000 non-farm jobs, the 88th straight month of job growth and the longest streak on record.
While trucking employment expanded, the wider transportation and warehousing sector added even more jobs for the month, slightly more than 11,000. More than 5,000 of these jobs were in the warehousing and storage sector with nearly as many coming from the couriers and messengers category.
Despite this continued strength in overall employment, the nation’s unemployment rate remained at 4.1%, the lowest its been since 2000, while wage growth during was the strongest since in nearly nine years.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% in January following December’s 0.4% gain. This boosted the year-on-year increase in average hourly earnings to 2.9% the largest rise since June 2009 and up from 2.7% in December.
According to Wells Fargo Securities, the job gains are consistent with 2.5% to 3% economic growth in the first half of 2018. Economic growth in the final quarter of 2017 was at an annual rate of 2.6% following performances of slightly better than 3% in the second and third quarters of last year.
“Quarterly annualized gross domestic product growth rates of 3% are not out of the question, however, sustained growth of 3% should largely be written off if the labor force participation rate does not improve,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities.
He said structural issues continue to hold back growth in this metric.
“While the labor force participation rate for men is higher than for women, growth in the prime age participation rate during this expansion has been led by women,” …Read the rest of this story
