Tag: U.S. Unemployment

U.S. Unemployment Rate Falling

U.S. job growth exceeded expectations in January, implying impressive economic growth and possibly lowering the need for additional Federal Reserve actions. Gold prices have fallen as a result.

According to the Labor Department, employers created 243,000 jobs in January, after adding 203,000 last December. A recent Bloomberg News survey predicted an increase of only 140,000 job positions. The U.S. employment rate has fallen to its lowest in three years; 8.3%.

“The growth in the U.S. is much better than expected, and that has damped the expectation of quantitative easing,” said Integrated Brokerage Services LLC’s Frank McGhee. “The market has priced in continued slow growth.”

Precious metals have fallen in value over the past few weeks, however. According to Bloomberg, gold futures for April fell 1.1%, while silver futures slid 1.2%.

U.S. Economy Adds 80,000 Jobs

In the month of October, the U.S. economy added 80,000 jobs, and unemployment rates fell slightly, from 9.1% to 9.0%, revealing that while the going is slow, the world’s greatest economy is on a stable path to recovery.

Furthermore, the economy did not falter in the face of August’s incidents, including the downgrade to the US credit rating and the EU debt crisis. Still, the pace of recovery remains slow.

The revisions of the past few months reveal the risk of depending on the initial employment data.

“You want to see revisions to the upside if one expects firming labor conditions. Weaker labor markets normally create downward revisions. The trend is moving in the right direction,” said Eric Green of TD Securities in New York.