Traverse City Record-Eagle

Nation & World

January 6, 2012

Unemployment drops in burst of hiring

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation added 200,000 jobs in December in a burst of hiring that drove the unemployment rate to its lowest in almost three years. The figures raised hopes that the economy might finally be healthy enough to power an even stronger job market.

Four long years after the start of a Great Recession that wiped out 8.7 million jobs, a Labor Department report Friday showed that the past six months have been the strongest for job creation in the United States since 2006.

The December gains, spread in industries throughout the economy and far better than economists had expected, sent the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent, the lowest since February 2009. It has fallen four months in a row.

"There is more horsepower to this economy than most believe," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. "The stars are aligned right for a meaningful economic recovery."

If economics textbooks and the best hopes of millions of unemployed Americans are confirmed, the economy may be at the start of what is known as the virtuous cycle — a self-sustaining, steadily improving pattern of hiring and spending.

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