"We've got a long way to go to get back to a fully employed economy, but we are on the road"
- James Glassman, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The U.S. economy created more job places in January compared with a previous month, rebounding from a slump the prior month and showing the labour market will keep making progress this year. The Labor Department said Tuesday that the number of positions waiting to be filled jumped by 81,000 to 3.69 million from revised 3.61 million a month earlier. Meanwhile, the number of workers hired in the first month of a year rose to 4.25 million from 4.2 million, while the overall hiring rate stood at 3.1%, unchanged from previous month. Firings, however, slowed to 1.51 million in January from 1.57 million. While the unemployment rate fell to 7.7% in February, the stable improvement of the labour market is increasing chances that the Fed may finish its quantitative easing programme earlier than previously announced.
"We've got a long way to go to get back to a fully employed economy, but we are on the road," James Glassman, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, said during an interview on Bloomberg Radio. "If you look at the labour market data, you can't find any evidence of this political debate that is going on, the fiscal cliff, all that."
"The labour market looks pretty solid," said Drew Matus, deputy U.S. chief economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford.
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