Below, EPI economists offer their insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 353,000 jobs added in January.

From EPI senior economist, Elise Gould (@eliselgould):

Read the full thread here.

The unemployment rate held steady in January at 3.7%.

26 months in a row of 4.0% or below unemployment!

Changes in the population controls caution comparisons over time, but they had no impact on the overall unemployment, employment, or labor force participation rates. pic.twitter.com/CTceC6LkEd

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) February 2, 2024

While pre-pandemic levels may be a low benchmark considering economic and population growth since then, the closing of some of those gaps is still encouraging. Every sector–including leisure and hospitality–is now less than 100,000 jobs from its February 2020 level. pic.twitter.com/PnRaEALhT0

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) February 2, 2024

YoY nominal wage growth ticked up a bit. The gap between prod/nonsupervisory—roughly the lower 80% of the wage distribution—and overall wage growth narrowed in the last year. Nominal wage growth is consistent with inflation and productivity growth and clawing back labor share. pic.twitter.com/TnhWvb3faj

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) February 2, 2024

From EPI president, Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz):

To be clear, i do not mean to imply that layoffs aren’t devastating for the people facing them. They are. I just mean to say that economy-wide, layoffs are not elevated right now—quite the opposite, they are very low.

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) February 2, 2024