Wages rose a healthy 4.1% last month from a year earlier and the unemployment rate in December held at 3.7%. It suggests the labor market is no longer at risk of overheating, particularly as private-sector hiring has eased over the past few months. “It’s a labor market that showed substantial resilience while cooling to levels that were much more acceptable from the Fed’s perspective,” said Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. That is another signal the labor market is losing some steam, said Nancy Vanden Houten, U.S. lead economist at Oxford Economics. That, in turn, could slow the labor market and economic growth overall.

Source: Wall Street Journal January 06, 2024 08:05 UTC