A steady gain in hiring last month keeps the Federal Reserve on track to lift interest rates next month and could prompt increases at meetings in May and June.
Fed officials had already signaled they were prepared to look past Friday’s report amid fears of a hiring slowdown from the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which surged across the U.S. last month. Instead, the report showed surprising strength in hiring, not just last month, but over the past several months.
The report underscores just how difficult it is to forecast near-term changes in the economy right now. Employers added 467,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate edged up to 4%. It had fallen to 3.9% in December from 5.9% last June, a historically rapid drop.
Revisions to hiring figures for 2021 showed that while the economy added slightly fewer…
