After the final jobs report for 2019 showed wage growth missed expectations, the Dow closed below 29,000 after reaching the milestone for the first time in intraday trading.

But Grover Norquist, conservative activist and president of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform, said the jobs report was “good on all counts”

“I particularly like the U6, which is the unemployment number that includes discouraged workers,” he told Cheddar. Discouraged workers are those individuals who stop looking for jobs and no longer count toward general unemployment numbers.

“Unemployment is at a historic 50-year low, but discouraged workers is also at an all-time low,” he said. The discouraged and underemployed workers rate fell to 6.7 percent. He noted that the number is the lowest since the government began being measured in 1994.

In today’s report, the Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls increased by only 145,000 versus the 160,000 that had been expected as the unemployment rate held steady at 3.5 percent.

Today’s report also marked a slow rise in average hourly earnings, which rose by 2.9 percent, below the 3.1 percent projection.

Of those employed, women held more U.S. jobs than men for the first time in a decade. The last time women overtook men in payrolls was between January 2009 and April 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Share:
More In Business
New Guidelines for Gig Workers: Are You Impacted?
The Biden administration has enacted a new labor rule that aims to prevent the misclassification of workers as independent contractors. The labor department rule going into effect Tuesday replaces a scrapped Trump-era standard that lowered the bar for classifying employees as contractors
2024 Fitness Trends With Orangetheory CEO Dave Long
Dave Long, CEO and Co-Founder of Orangetheory Fitness joins Cheddar to chat trends in the industry for 2024. He updates us on the company's plans to expand and what the state of the economy has meant for business.
Load More