January Payrolls Soar By 225K, Smashing Expectations As Hourly Earnings Coming In Hot

For once the ADP private payrolls report was not that far off.

With Wall Street expecting a 165K print in this morning payrolls report, and with ADP coming in at almost 300K, the whisper number was obviously well above the official consensus, and the BLS did not disappoint, because just as Trump hinted a few days ago with his “jobs, jobs, jobs” tweet, in January the US created a whopping 225K jobs, smashing expectations, and well above last month’s upward revised 142K print.

The unemployment rate nudged higher by 0.1%, rising to 3.6%, above the 3.5% expected, yet still just barely above 50 year lows. Of note, the unemployment rate for both hispanics and blacks also rose to the highest since mid-2019.

Most notable, however, for markets was the rebound in hourly earnings, which rebounded from last month’s upward revised 3.0%, hitting 3.1%. Notably, after plunging in December to 3.2% from a decade high 3.8%, the average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers also staged a modest rebound, rising to 3.3% in January.

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