Employment Figures Fit 'Soft Landing' Predictions; Slower Job Growth Balm for Inflation
The nation's labor market softened slightly last month, with the unemployment rate edging up to 4.6 percent as job growth slowed, the Labor Department said yesterday.</br></br>The report fits with widespread government and private forecasts that the economy will slow to a cooler but still-solid pace of growth this year after expanding rapidly last year. That is expected to cause the drum-tight job market to ease and inflation pressures to ebb.</br></br>The Labor Department's report "paints a perfect picture of the U.S. economy and labor markets making a 'soft-landing,' " said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group.</br></br>The jobless rate ticked up in January from 4.5 percent in December but remains low by historical standards. Much of the increase occurred because hundreds of thousands of workers poured into the labor force last month, likely drawn by booming job growth at the end of last year.</br></br>Employers increased their payrolls by 206,000 workers in December and by 196,000 in November, the department said, revising upward earlier estimates. That was more than the monthly number of new jobs, 100,000 to 150,000, that many economists think necessary to keep pace with growth in the labor force.