The US economy created far more jobs than expected in December, sending conflicting signals about the state of the world’s largest economy.
The Bureau of Labour Statistics reported that non-farm payrolls surged by 312,000 in the month, the strongest month since February 2018.
Wall Street analysts had expected just 175,000 new jobs, reflecting other signs of a slowdown in growth.
The November jobs growth estimate was also revised up from 155,000 to 176,000.
“Great jobs numbers just announced!” tweeted the US president Donald Trump.
The news sent the dollar index – a measure of the value of the dollar against a basket of other currencies - up sharply to 96.509.
However, traders did not change their bets that there would be no further increases in interest rates by the Federal Reserve in 2019 due to concerns over slowing momentum in the US economy and a possible recession risk.
“Overall, the markets may have decided the Fed’s work is done, but the economic data say otherwise,” said Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics.
The strong jobs data follows a weak US industrial survey from ISM for December earlier this week
The BLS reported jobs gains in December in healthcare, food services, construction, manufacturing and retail.
Strongest since February
The headline jobless rate rose from 3.7 per cent to 3.9 per cent, but that was mainly attributable to a surge in the size of the labour force.
The overall participation rate increased from 63.1 per cent to 62.9 per cent.
Average weekly earnings rose to an annual rate of 3.2 per cent, up from 3.1 per cent previously.
