US payrolls grow by 304,000 despite government shutdown

WaEx: U.S. payrolls added 304,000 workers in January, letting President Trump keep bragging rights for a strong labor market as employers seemingly shrugged off the longest government shutdown in the country’s history.

The increase reported by the U.S. Labor Department on Friday was nearly double the average estimate of 165,000 from economists surveyed by FactSet and remained well above the level needed to keep up with inflation. The unemployment rate, calculated separately, ticked up to 4 percent from 3.9 percent in December and compares with a nearly 50-year low of 3.7 percent in November.

“A lot of economists were pricing in some impact of the government shutdown in the job growth numbers, and clearly that didn’t play out, particularly in the private sector,” Joseph Song, an economist with Bank of America, told the Washington Examiner.

January hiring almost matched an initial report from the previous month that employers added a jaw-dropping 312,000 workers, and reflects the impact of a partial government closure that began Dec. 22 after President Trump refused to sign any government-funding bill that didn’t include $5.7 billion for a wall along the southern U.S. border that he promised in his 2016 campaign.  read more