WASHINGTON — America's employers likely kept hiring at a healthy pace last month, defying high interest rates, rising pressure on consumers and labor strikes that idled big swaths of the nation's auto industry.
since March 2022 to try to slow the economy, cool hiring and tame inflation, which hit a four-decade high last year. “It’s still a very strong labor market,’’ said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “The Federal Reserve would like to see something a little less strong ... We’re moving in that direction.’’
Yet inflation remains well above the Fed’s 2% target, and workers’ year-over-year pay gains, Vanden Houten said, would need to fall to 3.5% to be consistent with the central bank’s inflation goal.
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