Job Growth Paced for Best Year Since Y2K Loomed Over Eminem

The last time the U.S. saw job gains like those so far this year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average breached 10,000 for the first time, rapper Eminem released his first major album and the Y2K specter loomed large. In other words, it’s been a while.

Even after a slow start in January, payrolls have added about 214,000 jobs each month on average this year, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. If the pace is sustained for the remainder of the year, it would mark the fastest-growing labor market in the U.S. since 1999, when the economy added about 265,000 jobs on average each month as companies ramped up hiring to prepare their computer systems for the threat of the so-called Year 2000 bug.