ANKARA
The US economy added 467,000 jobs in January, well above market estimates, but the unemployment rate rose to 4%, the Department of Labor announced on Friday.
Market estimates were for nonfarm payrolls to see an increase of 150,000 last month.
Job additions for December were revised up strongly to 510,000, from 199,000, according to data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The unemployment rate, on the other hand, increased by 0.1 percentage point to 4% in January.
The market expectation for the unemployment rate was to remain unchanged from December’s 3.9%.
The number of unemployed individuals in the US increased to 6.5 million in January, from 6.3 million the month before.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, more than 22 million people in the world’s largest economy lost their jobs in March and April 2020.
President Joe Biden said in a press conference later that the US economy has created 6.6 million jobs since he took office just over a year ago.
He also noted that the economy during that period has shown the strongest recovery in 40 years as it came back from the pandemic.
"Vaccinations and boosters are proven incredibly effective," he said, noting that the US rolled out tens of millions of at-home tests delivered to American households for free during the past month.
"Wages are up this year," Biden said, but added "Gas and food prices are up," and argued that his economic plan would ease long-term inflationary pressures.
