Categories: Retirement Planning and Investing

Payrolls Rise Much Less Than Forecast; Unemployment Dips to 6.7%

Payrolls Rise Much Less Than Forecast; Unemployment Dips to 6.7% (Bloomberg)

Payrolls rose in December at the slowest pace in almost three years, breaking a string of recent strong gains in the U.S. labor market, the Labor Department reported. The 74,000 rise in December payrolls fell below the most pessimistic projection in a Bloomberg survey. The median forecast of 90 economists in the Bloomberg survey called for an increase of 197,000 jobs in December, with the survey estimates for December ranging from gains of 100,000 to 250,000. The low job growth in December followed a revised 241,000 jump the prior month. The unemployment rate for December dropped to 6.7 percent, the lowest since October 2008, but could have been due to a surge of people dropping out of the labor force. The unemployment rate for December was forecast to hold at 7 percent. The jobless rate averaged 7.4 percent in 2013, the lowest in five years.

Paul Dykewicz

Paul Dykewicz is the editor of StockInvestor.com and the editorial director of Eagle Financial Publications in Washington, D.C. He writes and edits for the website, as well as edits investment newsletters, time-sensitive trading alerts and other reports published by Eagle. He also is an accomplished, award-winning journalist who has written for Dow Jones, USA Today and other publications, as well as served as business editor of a daily newspaper in Baltimore. In addition, Paul is the author of the inspirational book, "Holy Smokes! Golden Guidance from Notre Dame's Championship Chaplain." He received his MBA in finance from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a two-time president of the school's Finance Club. In addition, Paul has a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in journalism from Michigan State University. Outside of work, Paul volunteers with a faith-based organization to assist the poor in Southeast Washington, D.C., to learn personal finance skills to lift themselves out of debt.