US employers stepped up hiring last month, boosting payrolls by 193,000 and lowering the nation's unemployment rate to 4.7 percent, the lowest since July 2001.
The fresh snapshot of the jobs climate, released by the US Labor Department on Friday, suggested that the economy started the new year on fairly good footing.
Although the 193,000 gain in payroll jobs last month fell short of the 250,000 new jobs that economists said to anticipate before the release of the report, it still marked a sturdy showing and was the biggest increase in jobs since November.
"There's no question we're getting back to better days for job creation," said Ken Mayland, economist at ClearView Economics.
"There's been a sense of unease in the American workplace and this should help relieve that. The economy is getting on off to excellent start in 2006," he said.
Moreover, job growth in December turned out to be stronger than previously thought. Revised figures showed payrolls expanded by 140,000 -- an improvement over the 108,000 new jobs first estimated a month ago. Employment was revised up for some previous months as well.
The unemployment rate dropped to 4.7 percent last month, from 4.9 percent in December.
In another report, the US Commerce Department said that factory orders rose by 1.1 in December, a good sign that manufacturing was off to a strong start in the new year.
This improvement followed an even higher 3.3 percent gain in November and marked the third straight month where new bookings to factories went up. December's performance was in line with the 1 percent increase in factory orders that economists were forecasting before the release of the report.
For all of last year, factory orders rose 8.1 percent. That followed a gain of 9.7 percent in 2004.
Job gains were fairly broad based, with employment growing in construction, manufacturing, professional and business services and education and health care. Those employment gains blunted job losses in retailing and government.
For all of last year, the economy created nearly 2 million jobs -- close to the the number posted for 2004, according to annual revisions.
In New York, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said on Friday that the service sector grew again last month, but the pace of growth slowed while extending an expansion that has stretched for nearly three years. Its index of nonmanufacturing activity fell to 56.8 from a revised reading of 61.0 in December. The new figure was lower than the 60 reading forecast by analysts.
A reading of 50 and above points to a growing service sector, while a figure below that signals contraction. Last month marked the 34th consecutive month of growth for the service sector, ISM said.
Despite good news on some economic matters, Americans still feel anxious about the economy, polls indicate.
US President George W. Bush, coping with relatively low job-approval ratings, is seeking to ease those fears. In his State of the Union address as well as subsequent speeches Bush has been talking about ways to make the country more competitive and is pushing plans to deal with pocketbooks issues, such as high energy prices and rising health care costs.
Bush also is calling on Congress to make his tax cuts permanent. Democrats, however, contend the tax cuts mostly helped the wealthy and are a big reason why the government's balance sheets are bleeding red ink.
Employees' average hourly earnings climbed to US$16.41 last month, up 0.4 percent from December. That increase was slightly larger than the 0.3 percent rise that economists were expecting.
While wage growth is good for workers, a big pickup if sustained -- would be troubling to investors and economists who fret about inflation. To fend off inflation, the US Federal Reserve on Tuesday boosted a key interest rate to its highest point in nearly five years. New Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will decide the next rate move at the Fed's next meeting, March 28. Many economists believe another rate increase is likely to come then.
Mayland said he believes the pickup in workers' wages should help support consumer spending, a key shaper of overall economic activity. Mayland predicts that the US economy, which grew by an anemic 1.1 percent rate in the final quarter of last year, is rebounding smartly in the January-to-March quarter.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”