Jobs report: Unemployment falls to 3.4% in January as hiring remains strong

Yahoo Finance Live anchors discuss the January Jobs report.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JULIE HYMAN: So just to recap these numbers and the surprising nature of them that we got just moments ago. 517,000 jobs added to the US economy. You see that is more than double the estimate of 188,000. The unemployment rate falling to 3.4%. Average hourly earnings ticking up by 4.4% on a year-over-year basis.

And as we were talking about, some of the-- some of the groups where we're seeing additions-- leisure and hospitality, as we talked about, continuing to add 128,000 jobs. The weakest groups, in terms of job gains or even seeing some job losses, areas like information, i.e. tech, right? We-- that's no surprise. And financial services.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, and it really comes back to, as well within this, that labor force participation rate, 62.4%. Employment population ratio sitting right now about 60.2%. So slight changes there on the labor force participation rate.

But then again, just that 3.4 unemployment rate, as we were kind of having our conversation ahead of time, and that was the chart that I was calling for here. That was the focus here. And that's gonna continue, as well, to be the focus for a Fed that has leaned on a strong employment situation as-- to continue forward in their pathway on policy front.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, and we've seen some divergences in past reports between the establishment in the household survey, i.e. non-farm payrolls and unemployment rate. Not so this time. They're both going, at least directionally, in the same direction.