The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its final US jobs report for 2016 on Friday.
US wages in December rose at their fastest pace since mid-2009, with average hourly earnings climbing by 2.9% year-over-year. The economy also added 156,000 jobs, fewer than expected but enough to extend the record streak of job creation in the US.
In conjunction with the BLS data, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report summarizing the eight years of labor-market progress under the Obama administration.
And in that report the team included two pie charts, which show the share of total employment for each of the advanced Group of Seven economies and the share of net growth in employment for those countries.
The chart on the left shows that the US accounts for about two-fifths of total employment in the G-7, but the chart on the right shows that it has seen almost 56% of the net employment growth among the advanced economies since 2010. In other words, from the first quarter of 2010 to the third quarter of 2016, the US accounted for a disproportionate share of employment growth and put more people back to work than Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan combined.
"The rebound of the US economy from the Great Recession occurred much faster than in most other advanced economies and compares favorably with the historical record of countries recovering from systemic financial crises," wrote Jason Furman, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.