U.S. Labor Market Ends 2024 With a Robust Performance

U.S. job growth surged in December, surpassing expectations. Employers added roughly 256,000 workers to payrolls in December 2024, according to a survey of businesses by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Those additions were the biggest monthly gain in nine months and also came in above the roughly 155,000 to 165,000 jobs expected by economists. The U.S. economy has now added jobs for 48 consecutive months, tying with a stretch from mid-1986 to mid-1990 as the second-longest period of job base expansion on record dating back to 1939. The Education/Health Services sector (+80,000 jobs) added the most jobs in December, while Manufacturing (-13,000 jobs) and Mining/Logging (-3,000 jobs) were the only industries to lose jobs. For all of 2024, employers added more than 2.2 million jobs or an average 186,000 jobs a month. Although that was down from the slightly more than 3 million jobs added in 2023, it was still a strong showing and marked a return to pre-pandemic norms. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate (U3 or headline unemployment rate, which is seasonally adjusted, and is a survey of households) fell from 4.2% in November to 4.1% in December.

This post is part of a series analyzing employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For more on this data, read previous posts on Job Growth.