• Employers added 156,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate stood little changed from prior months at 4.7 percent, according to the December jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• The labor force participation rate – the share of Americans working or actively seeking jobs – was unchanged at 62.7 percent in December.
• Wages grew at a 2.9 percent annual pace in December, the fastest pace since July 2009 when the recovery began.

The final jobs report of 2016 was fairly consistent with what we’ve seen over the past few months, showing decent if not spectacular growth and painting a picture of an economy in overall good shape. President-elect Trump will take office with a job market that is certainly leaps and bounds better than the one the Obama Administration inherited. After peaking at 10 percent in October 2009, the national unemployment rate has essentially been cut in half and realistically can’t go too much lower. Given that, it will be important to find new benchmarks to gauge continued progress in the economy in the years ahead. Sustained and robust earnings growth will be critical, and today’s figure of 2.9 percent annual wage growth — the fastest pace in more than seven years — is a positive sign. The labor force participation rate – the share of Americans working or actively seeking jobs – has slipped in recent years, largely because of retiring Baby Boomers and other demographic shifts, but was unchanged last month. There aren’t many storm clouds on the horizon in the near-term, though the potential impacts of rising mortgage interest rates and the near-constant threat of global instability – among any number of other unforeseeable events – could always throw a wrench in the works.