Justin Fox, Columnist

Inevitable Job-Growth Slowdown Could Be a Good Thing

If the expansion is going to get a second wind, it's likely to come in the form of faster wage gains.

January 5, 2018 at 5:58 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

Think it'll help?
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

The U.S. economy is still creating lots of jobs, with a seasonally adjusted 148,000 added in December and 2.2 million (not seasonally adjusted, for reasons I discuss below) for full-year 2017, according to Friday's employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That 2.2 million is up a little (93,000 jobs, to be misleadingly precise about it) from 2016's total, but it's down substantially from earlier in the current economic expansion.