Half a million jobs up: US unemployment rate as low as 53 years ago

In the corona pandemic, millions of Americans lose their jobs, but then the economy booms again.

Half a million jobs up: US unemployment rate as low as 53 years ago

In the corona pandemic, millions of Americans lose their jobs, but then the economy booms again. This is also reflected in the labor market. The unemployment rate falls to 3.4 percent. This is the lowest level since 1969. The US Federal Reserve is not very enthusiastic about it.

Unemployment in the US has fallen to its lowest level in more than 50 years on the back of surprisingly good job numbers. The world's largest economy created 517,000 new jobs in January, almost twice as many as in the previous month, according to the Department of Labor in Washington. The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 point to 3.4 percent. The rate was last this low in May 1969.

New jobs were created in the leisure and hotel sectors as well as in the health sector, among other things, as the Ministry of Labor explained. However, the very good labor market figures are likely to cause concern for the US Federal Reserve. She hopes that the labor market will cool down because of the high inflation.

In the spring of 2020, millions of people in the United States lost their jobs because of the corona pandemic. In April 2020, the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 14.7 percent - the highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The US economy was later able to recover from the effects of the pandemic, and unemployment figures gradually fell.

At the same time, however, inflation rose sharply. It reached a 40-year high of 9.1 percent last June, also due to the effects of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. Inflation has since fallen to 6.5 percent. It is still well above the Fed's target of two percent. The central bank has raised the key interest rate eight times since last year, but recently slowed down the rate of increases.