Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Let’s take a deeper dive into today’s surprising good labor news.
Jobs growth revved up last month with more than 300,000 added. At this pace, the economy is on track to produce the largest number of jobs in 15 years.
One development that also caught much attention, average hourly wages rose higher than expected, the largest increase since June of last year.
Even so, earnings have grown a sluggish 2 percent in the past year.
Hari Sreenivasan has the story from our New York studios.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): I’m joined by Diane Swonk, an economist with Mesirow Financial, a financial services firm.
So, what’s behind the higher number today?
DIANE SWONK, Mesirow Financial: Well, a lot of good news.
We had actually some meat-on-the-bone jobs in things like business services. That’s an area that was really hard-hit during the recession. It includes everything from accountants, technical consultants, engineers, architects. That’s the good news.
We saw those meat-on-the-bone jobs. We also some manufacturing and construction jobs, off a low base, but still some jobs in those sectors. And then there was this huge hiring in retail, also in food, restaurants, all those kind of areas that are more…
HARI SREENIVASAN: Just from the holiday season?
DIANE SWONK: Holiday hires, but not just holiday hires; 20 percent of the retail hiring was in the auto sector to sell cars. That’s not really what we tend to buy as gifts for the holiday season.
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