2024 jobs market started out with a bang. And 2023 ended up being even better

Today portended to be a big jobs report. First of all to see if Americans kept gaining jobs at the start of 2024, after what had been a strong 2023.

On that front, January was pretty darned good for American workers.

JUST IN: The US economy added a blockbuster 353,000 jobs in January, far exceeding expectations of 180,000. This is a really healthy economy. (December jobs revised up to 333,000)

Unemployment rate: 3.7%

Wage growth: 4.5% in past year —>far ahead of 3.4% inflation #jobs

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) February 2, 2024

353,000 jobs were added in January. Strong hiring across the board

Biz +74,000
Healthcare +70,000
Retail +45,000
Gov't +36,000
Social aid +30,000
Manufacturing +23,000
Information +15,000 (Film industry +12,000)
Construction +11,000
Hospitality +11,000
Warehouse +5,500

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) February 2, 2024

That's great in its own right, but the bigger news was that the January report also featured the annual benchmarking where the Bureau of Labor Statistics takes all of the added data from the "gold standard" Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) and other data and revises all of the months of 2023. And that showed 2023 being even better than we knew.

Job growth "slowed" last year, but some perspective: After today's revisions, 2023 now stands as the best year for job growth since 1999, not counting the two years immediately before, as the economy emerged from the pandemic. https://t.co/bTlv99Pyyx pic.twitter.com/L66CtP3ak1

— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) February 2, 2024

Which is pretty amazing given that unemployment started the year at 3.4% and in theory there shouldn't have been many more jobs to be found. But we kept rolling along, and in fact, job growth for 2023 didn't level off nearly as much as we thought in the 2nd half of the year, as total job growth revised up by 359,000.

Previous years were also revised, which indicated that overall numbers weren't that different, but with some changes if broken down into 6-month intervals. For example, job growth was stronger in the first 6 months of the Biden Administration than numbers previously indicated, but also that late 2021 and late 2022 weren't as big for gains as originally indicated (although still pretty darn good).

What you see here is a steady US jobs market since inflation peaked in mid-2022, and it shows that Fed concerns of overheating have been off-base for quite a while.

Generally I'd say "what's not to like"? But I do notice the lower participation rate of 62.5% in December and January compared to 62.8% that we had in November, and average weekly hours worked dropped by 0.2 hours, meaning that weekly wages fell by 39 cents while hourly wages were going up. That may be a reflection of the horrible cold snap that hit in mid-January (which is when the monthly jobs report was compiling its data), but let's see if that means there might be soft underbelly that creeps up as 2024 moves ahead.

But that also illustrates how you have to grasp for bad things in this otherwise great jobs report. It offers even more proof that sustaining this strong economy has to be the overall goal for President Biden and honest Americans in 2024. Prices are in check, and productivity is up. And yes, we gotta keep it ROLLIN'.

The bigger threat for 2024 is people not spending on big-ticket items because of interest rates that are higher than they need to be, or losing jobs not because of a soft economy, but because of corporate greed.

Those are the things we need to call out and fight against in this Election Year. Things are very good overall, but they could be even better if the Masters of the Universe realized that they won't be allowed to get away with trying to steal from others and damage this economy without paying a price themselves.