In 2015, the US job market has experienced the greatest amount of growth since the end of the recession in 2009. 200,000-220,000 new jobs are created per month, significantly more so than the past four years. These promising new numbers have lead forecasters to predict for another positive month for the labor market.
The unemployment rate has declined by 0.2% to 5.6% in December. The number of unemployed individuals went to 8.7 million, a decline by 383,000. Throughout the year the unemployment rate has declined 1.1% to 1.7 million individuals. Of these statistics for December, there is a 5% decline in unemployed adult women.
There has been an increase in employment in the professional and business services sector, with the addition of 52,000 jobs in December alone. In the administrative and waste services jobs increased by 35,000. Computer systems design and related IT jobs went up by 9,000. Engineering and architecture increased by 5,000.
Despite these promising numbers an in-depth analysis of the monthly trends and statistics suggest that even with the steady demand for jobs increasing it is still low compared to the supply of potential workers. In the manufacturing sector, developments in productivity have increased efficiency in production, meaning that the average worker does not receive enough hours as they used to. This means that wages are not increasing as steadily as they need to be.
