The job growth is so strong, it is making it difficult to fight inflation...
...The nation's employers kept hiring briskly in November despite high inflation and a slow-growing economy " a sign of resilience in the face of the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes.
The economy added 263,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate stayed 3.7%, still near a 53-year low, the Labor Department said Friday. November's job growth dipped only slightly from October's 284,000 gain.
All year, as inflation has surged and the Fed has imposed ever-higher borrowing rates, America's labor market has defied skeptics, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month.
With not enough people available to fill jobs, businesses are having to offer higher pay to attract and keep workers. In November, average hourly pay jumped 5.1% compared with a year ago, a robust increase that is welcome news for workers but one that makes the Fed's efforts to curb inflation potentially more difficult. On a month-to-month basis, wages jumped 0.6% in November, breaking a streak of smaller gains that had suggested that pay growth might be cooling.
The strength of the hiring and pay gains raised immediate concerns that the Fed may now have to keep interest rates high even longer than many had assumed. The stock market reacted with alarm, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average sinking nearly 200 points in mid-morning trading Friday....
But if the job market seems to be as tight as the numbers show, well, the Fed's job has just become more difficult.
Happy Holidays, Fed Chairman Powell.
