Forget a seemingly miserable December for the U.S. economy or the dreary start in 2019: What really matters is whether businesses are still hiring — and they are.
By some measures the economy appears crummy. Retail sales and consumer spending nosedived in December — the decline in spending was the biggest since 2009 — and large swathes of the economy have begun to flag.The housing market was crunched by rising mortgage rates at year end, for example, and manufacturers grew in February at the slowest pace since Donald Trump was elected in 2016.Uh-uh. The economy has indeed shifted into a lower gear.
The Federal Reserve, for its part, recently gave a big assist to the economy by announcing that further increases in U.S. interest rates are on hold. The decision fueled a huge stock DJIA, -0.79% SPX, -0.39% rally and is likely to stoke home sales via lower mortgage rates.Read: Economy slows to 2.6% in fourth quarter, GDP shows, but it still shows lots of muscle
The pace of hiring in February, which the government reports Friday, is unlikely to match the big tab in January. The last time the U.S. posted back-to-back gains of 300,000 new jobs was in 2006. Winter weather is also a wild card early in the year. If the labor market does start to falter, the first signs will show up in how many people apply for unemployment benefits each week. The latest snapshot comes a day before the U.S. jobs report.
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