Did December's cold snap freeze hiring?

123,000 more workers than usual were out of work due to cold weather last month. That's the exact difference between today's jobs numbers and Wall Street's prediction.

Evans, N.Y., Decemeber 11
(Image credit: (REUTERS/Don Heupel))

The December jobs report is out, and the headline is that far fewer jobs were created than people were expecting. The number of payrolls increased just 74,000 compared to Wall Street's consensus of 197,000, and far below November's job-creation figure, which was revised up to 241,000 from a previous estimate of 203,000.

Yet unemployment fell to just 6.7 percent, down from seven percent last month, suggesting that there was a strong improvement in the proportion of people looking for work who found it.

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John Aziz is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate editor at Pieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and Noahpinion.