海角大神

Without question, 2014 has been the best year for jobs since the Great Recession ended in 2009. For the first time, monthly jobs growth has exceeded 200,000 new jobs each month of the year, which itself is something we had not seen in the previous four years, and for most of the year has averaged roughly 220,000 new jobs per month. In recent months, we鈥檝e seen compellingly strong numbers, especially last month鈥檚 release of the November report, which saw some of the best jobs creation we鈥檇 seen in years. Heading into the December report鈥檚 release today, the consensus among forecasters was for another mostly positive month, albeit one that was not nearly as good as November. As it turned out,聽the news for December was mostly good news, but there are several caveats that suggest yet again that the labor market is far from robust, even this far out from the end of the recession.

As is typically the case, there were revisions for the previous two months, with October job growth being revised upward from 243,000 to 261,000, and November job growth being revised upward from 321,000 to 353,000. Additionally, there was a slight drop in the long-term unemployment rate, although that may in part be attributable to a drop in labor force participation, although the employment rate remained unchanged. The one damper on the good news of the top-line numbers came in the details:

What these number suggest is that the demand for jobs is still low enough compared to supply that employers are not feeling pressure to increase wages or overall compensation to compete for applicants. That, combined with changes in productivity that mean that the average worker is able to get far more work done in a given period of time, means that wages are not increasing as fast as they鈥檇 be expected to at this point in the labor market cycle. An additional factor that may be playing a role here are the mandates that the Affordable Care Act puts in place which tie the obligation for employers to provide health-care coverage to the number of employees working a certain number of hours over a given period. By cutting back on hours for some employees, employers are able to control health-care costs as well, which accounts for a significant expense on the balance sheets of many businesses, and especially small and medium-sized businesses with thin profit margins.

Notwithstanding the wage segment of the report,聽The New York Times聽聽is largely positive about the numbers, and sees signs of a good 2015:

CNBC聽is more circumspect:

While it鈥檚 important not to ignore the caveats, it鈥檚 worth noting again that聽2014 was the best year for job growth since 1999, a fact which indicates not only potential good news going forward but also a reminder of just how weak the economy has actually been since recovering from the brief recession that we experienced in the wake of the bursting of the dot-com bubble at the end of the '90s. The so-called Bush recovery wasn鈥檛 much of a recovery at all, and the Obama recovery has, if anything, been even weaker, at least until this year. 2014 is arguably the beginning of a turnaround in that recovery, as both the jobs reports and GDP growth have seemed to confirm over the balance of the year, but the proof of whether or not this is a sustainable new trend remains to be seen. In the short term, declines in energy prices are likely to have beneficial effects for the economy as a whole, especially in the consumer spending area and for corporate profits in industries that are dependent on heavy use of energy. In the longer term, though, there are signs that the economies of Europe and other parts of the world may be weakening, something that is bound to have an impact in the United States at some point. In any case, it鈥檚 been a fairly good year for jobs here in the United States, but the wage numbers indicate that it could be much better, and that we鈥檝e still got a long way to go before we can say that the economy is truly healthy.