The strong labor market of President Joe Biden’s first three years in office has started to slow down. For both Democrats and the Federal Reserve, that isn’t as bad as it sounds.
The U.S. added 199,000 jobs last month — off the eye-popping 240,000 average of the previous 12 months — and the unemployment rate dipped to 3.7 percent, the Labor Department reported on Friday.
The November tally was boosted by the roughly 40,000 workers who went back on the job after the conclusion of lengthy strikes affecting the auto and movie industries. That one-shot increase means private companies are adding jobs at “a relatively soft pace, although one that will probably be welcomed at the Fed,” Omair Sharif of Inflation Insights said in a research note published after the report was released.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has placed a lot of emphasis on the labor market in his drive to bring down inflation. When the........