A hiring chill hit the U.S. labor market for the second straight month in January, reflecting employers’ reluctance to take on new workers despite some of the nation’s strongest economic growth in years.
U.S. payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 113,000 in January after December’s lackluster gain of 75,000 jobs, marking the weakest two-month stretch of job creation in three years, the Labor Department said Friday.
Yet the unemployment rate ticked down to 6.6%””the lowest level since late 2008. The decline came because more people found jobs last month as opposed to last year when it fell in part because of unemployed Americans abandoning their job hunts and dropping out of the labor force.