Hiring climbed at the end of 2022, according to new data from the Labor Department and separate data from LinkedIn.

• The most recent labor market report showed continued resilience even as the Fed’s rate hikes further slow the economy. U.S. payrolls jumped 223,000 in December, beating economists’ expectations for the ninth straight month.
• LinkedIn’s Principal Economist Guy Berger called the report “unambiguously solid.” He noted that employment increased at a level just above the pre-pandemic trend while the share of prime working age Americans with a job rebounded to its March level. Sectors like tech, he said, are “bearing the brunt of the cooling we’ve seen in the labor market,” but there are some particularly bright spots like health care, education and government “that are overall holding in there,” he said. LinkedIn’s data also showed that hiring ticked up in December. This bodes well for those with career-oriented New Year’s resolutions — January and February are typically big months for job searching.
• A separate Labor Department report, out earlier last week, showed that job openings held at a relatively high level in November. There were 10.5 million postings in November, below the all-time high of 11.9 million last March, but still outstripping the 6 million unemployed Americans looking for work.
• Positive employment reports to close out 2022 are a reason to be optimistic, according economist Orphe Divounguy. “We may not be out of the woods yet, but we have many reasons to suspect the worst economic predictions for 2023 may not materialize,” he commented. The next economic indicator to look out for is Thursday’s inflation report, he continued.

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