U.S. Labor Market Adds 353,000 Jobs In January As Black Unemployment Hits Historic Low

The U.S. labor market added 353,000 jobs in January, continuing an upward trend and significantly outpacing expectations as Black unemployment hits a historic low.

The January total brings the 2023 monthly job gain average to 255,000. The January gains are almost double what forecasters expected, a sign of the surprising economic strength and gross domestic product measurements for the fourth quarter of 2023. Average hourly earnings were also on the rise.

“We were expecting about half that number, so it’s good news,” Council of Economic Advisers member Kirabo Jackson told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “Another big headline is the unemployment rate remains below 4%. This is now the second consecutive year that has been the case, and it’s a record we haven’t seen in over 50 years. Another nice piece of the story here is overall, we’re seeing positive wage growth, which is outpacing the recent rate of inflation, which means that paychecks are growing faster than prices, which is good for the American employee and the American consumer.”

President Joe Biden and V.P. Kamala Harris have turned a 14% unemployment rate at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic into one of the best job markets in the county’s history. Additionally, the administration has found a way to avoid what many were saying was a 100% chance that the economy would dip into a recession. Jackson also pointed out that the U.S. economy is doing much better than other nations, including China and Europe.

“We’ve added 3 million jobs in 2023 alone, which is way better than anything we’ve seen in the previous four years,” said Jackson. “Just to add another piece of context, if you look at how we did in relation to other nations and our colleagues in Europe, we’ve had about twice as much growth and percentage terms as far as our colleagues on the other side, so overall we’re doing very well.”

Black Americans are also feeling the success of the labor market. While the national unemployment rate is at 3.7%, Black unemployment is at a record low 4.8%, the lowest it’s been since Black unemployment has been tracked.

“We’ve not seen an unemployment rate for African Americans this low since the data has been collected, so this is certainly something to be very happy about, but having said that, the work is not done,” said Jackson. “There’s still a lot of work that we’re doing to try to bring that number even lower and in the idea there’d be no difference between the unemployment rate for white Americans and Black Americans so we’re doing a lot to invest in African-American communities which has been a key part of this administration’s transition to clean energy.”

Jackson added that more than two-thirds of new energy jobs are in minority-majority areas, and it’s part of a concerted effort to diversify the labor market and new positions. The Biden Administration is also working on diversifying the number of individuals who receive small business loans from the Small Business Administration and government contracts.

“So this is a concerted effort to build wealth and create opportunities in communities of color the numbers, and we’re seeing this in the extraordinarily low unemployment numbers that we’ve seen in the past few years,” Jackson told BE.