Job growth slowed in December following a big hiring spurt in November with employers expanding payrolls by 108,000, underscoring the sometimes choppy path traveled by job seekers.
The Labor Department’s fresh snapshot of the nation’s jobs climate, released Friday, also showed that the unemployment rate dipped from 5 percent in November to 4.9 percent in December, as some people left the labor market for any number of reasons. The 108,000 gain in payrolls followed a big pickup of 305,000 jobs added in November, according to revised figures released Friday. That was the most since April 2004 and was even stronger than the 215,000 job gains first estimated for November a month ago.
