Hiring cooled in December, with employers adding 145,000 jobs

Employers added 145,000 jobs in December, closing a year that has seen businesses expand at a more modest pace. The U.S. unemployment rate stayed steady at 3.5%, the Labor Department said.

Jobs were added in retail, health care and leisure and hospitality, but dropped in the mining and manufacturing sectors.

Overall, 2019 has seen about 176,000 jobs added every month — the slowest rate of job growth since 2010, although more than enough to keep up with population growth.

Wage growth is slowing from 2019, a sign there continues to be some slack in the job market despite the lowest unemployment rate in half a century. Average hourly earnings in December grew 2.9% from the prior year, the slowest rate of growth since 2018.

“A healthy jobs number, but lackluster wage growth is not news workers want to hear,” Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a note. “Given the labor market is tightening, that wages only grew at a 2.9% rate in the last year is another argument that something has fundamentally changed in the economy.”

This is a developing story.