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[ad_1] Amid last year's U.S. economic upheaval, the ultra-tight job market was a rare high point, with low unemployment, strong hiring and rapidly rising wages.  The government's employment report for December, set to be released on Friday, will indicate just how good that year was. Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and businesses nationwide will be closely scrutinizing the figures to see how hot the job market has been — or whether it's showing signs of a slowdown. Here's what they'll be looking at.  How many jobs did the U.S. create? Economists expect employers to have added 200,000 jobs in December, according to a survey on FactSet. That would mark a decline from the robust pace of hiring in the second half of the year, but would still indicate far stronger job creation than what is needed to keep up with population growth and unemployment from rising.  "Announced hiring freezes began to spread in late autumn,

[ad_1] One boss got so angry after a former employee contacted government labor regulators about a missing paycheck that he delivered the money in the form of 91,000 greasy pennies  dropped on the worker's driveway.  Now, the Labor Department has found that Miles Walker, the owner of A OK Walker Autoworks in Peachtree City, Georgia, retaliated against the worker by dumping the coins and by trashing the employee on the business' website, according to a recently concluded investigation . According to legal filings, the drama started when Andreas Flaten, who had left his job at the auto shop in 2021, called the Labor Department to complain that he had never received his last paycheck. After the agency contacted the shop to inquire about the payment, Walker responded by delivering the payment in pennies.  Payback in pennies Two months later, on March 12, 2021, Walker dumped the oil-covered pennies in Flaten's driveway, along wit

[ad_1] The red-hot job market capped off 2022 on a high note, with employers adding 223,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported Friday. The payroll numbers reflect a slowdown from the pace of job creation earlier in the year, but they are slightly above economists' predictions  that businesses had added about 200,000 jobs last month. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% as more workers found jobs, matching a 50-decade low. The Federal Reserve is seeking to tamp inflation by putting the brakes on the economy — including hiring — through its series of recent interest rate hikes. While employers added more jobs than expected in December, investors were cheered by last month's cooler wage growth. "It's hard to imagine a jobs report in better balance," said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, in an email. "Wage growth is slowing, which will take some pressure off inflation,