Kenje Group KJG - US Unemployment at 8-Year Low

Tokyo, Japan, February 23, 2016 (Newswire.com) - Kenje Group (KJG) - Non-farm payrolls data for January have shown the US economy created 151,000 new jobs compared with expectations for 190,000. The worse-than-expected number is the latest in a slew of data pointing to a broad-based slowing of growth in the world’s largest economy.

The unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 4.9% while the labor force participation rate edged higher to 62.7%.

Part-time sales assistants and waiting jobs aren't going to be paying the kind of salaries that enable people to buy real estate or big-ticket items.

KJG Kenje Group , Analyst

The miss comes a month after the US Federal Reserve moved to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade and adds to speculation that the central bank may be forced to reverse the increase.

Retail accounted for 58,000 jobs while bars and restaurants took 47,000. Healthcare and manufacturing added 37,000 and 29,000 respectively and, according to a KJG Kenje Group analyst, provided confirmation that the jobs being created were not the well-paying positions the economy needed to spur growth in consumption and real estate.

“Part-time sales assistants and waiting jobs aren’t going to be paying the kind of salaries that enable people to buy real estate or big-ticket items,” she explained.

KJG Kenje Group warned that it expected the overall pace of job creation to decline in the coming months and pointed to the growing number of layoffs in key industries like energy and mining.

“Unemployment data is a lagging indicator and it’s almost always the last shoe to drop before people finally begin accepting that a recession or at least a period of subpar growth is imminent,” concluded the KJG Kenje Group analyst.