美国国家公共电台 NPR U.S. Economy Added 225,000 Jobs In January; Unemployment Rate（在线收听）

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

America's jobs engine accelerated last month. The Labor Department says U.S. employers added 225,000 jobs in January. That is more than forecasters were expecting. The unemployment rate inched up a bit to 3.6%, but that is still close to a half-century low. NPR's Scott Horsley is with us now to pass the numbers. Hi, Scott.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good morning, Rachel.

MARTIN: So forecasters were expecting more modest gains in January, somewhere around 160,000. So this is somewhat of a pleasant surprise. What happened?

HORSLEY: One big bright spot was in the construction industry. We added 44,000 construction jobs in January. That's more than triple the monthly average we saw last year. Some of that is due to warmer-than-usual weather in January. So people who would have gotten hired later in the spring just got jobs earlier. So - but there's also signs of a real increase in homebuilding. That's thanks in part to lower interest rates. About half the construction jobs we added in January were on the residential side. And then we just saw a lot of hiring in things like health care, education and hospitality, which have been adding jobs month after month for a while now.

MARTIN: Any weak spots?

HORSLEY: Manufacturing continues to see some challenges. Factories were in a slump for about five months at the end of 2019, thanks in part to lower global demand for manufactured goods and trade tensions. Those trade tensions have eased a little bit. And we got a report earlier in the week suggesting a modest rebound in factory activity, but that didn't translate to factory jobs in January. Factories shed 12,000 jobs last month, and that's before we see any fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.

MARTIN: Right.

HORSLEY: Retail is also a weak spot as it has been. Eight thousand retail jobs were cut last month. You know, Macy's just announced another round of store closings this week. It's not that consumers aren't spending money; they are, but they're not necessarily spending it at the shopping mall.

MARTIN: Right.

HORSLEY: The plus side is that they are spending in online stores, and that means more jobs in warehouses and in transportation - picking up and packing up and delivering all those boxes. And we saw gains there of 28,000 jobs.

MARTIN: What about wages? Is the good job market affecting paychecks?

HORSLEY: We saw a little acceleration in wage gains in January. Over the last twelve months, wages - average wages are up 3.1%. That's up from 2.9% in December. And it is enough to keep consumers ahead of inflation. But it's still not as strong as you might expect, given the really low unemployment numbers we've seen. It could be there's more slack in the job market than the unemployment numbers would indicate. We continue to pull more people off the sidelines. The number of people in the labor force ticked up in January. That's good news because it means employers are finding the workers they need to keep the expansion going, but it does kind of keep a lid on wage hikes.

MARTIN: So the Labor Department also announced updated numbers, something - they updated some of their old numbers this month. Can you explain what those numbers are and why this is important to note?

HORSLEY: This is something the Labor Department does every year. They go back and update the employment figures using more complete information, and usually it doesn't make a big difference. This year, though, the revision is larger than normal. The department says about a half million fewer jobs were added between the spring of 2018 and the spring of 2019 than initially reported.

Now, it's still a real strong job market, but it does mean the jobs numbers that President Trump boasted about in his State of the Union speech this week need a little update. It turns out that in the first 36 months under President Trump, the U.S. economy added 6.6 million jobs. For comparison, in the previous 36 months, the U.S. economy added 8.1 million jobs.

MARTIN: All right. NPR's chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley for us this morning. Thank you, Scott.

HORSLEY: You're welcome.