Raw Story

by Beiyi SEOW

U.S. job gains soared past expectations in December, according to government data released Friday, in a sign the labor market remains healthy shortly before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration this month.

Hiring in the world's biggest economy was 256,000 last month, up from a revised 212,000 in November, the Labor Department said.

The December figure was significantly above the market consensus estimate of 154,000, according to Briefing.com.

The jobless rate meanwhile crept down to 4.1 percent from 4.2 percent.

The latest report marks a solid end to 2024 for the jobs market, which has held up in the face of elevated interest rates, allowing consumers to continue spending.

Outgoing President Joe Biden lauded his administration's performance, saying: "Although I inherited the worst economic crisis in decades with unemployment above six percent when I took office, we've had the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years with unemployment at 4.1 percent as I leave."

"This has been a hard-fought recovery," he added in a statement.

Trump's return to the White House this month could bring uncertainty.

He has pledged to cut taxes, raise tariffs on imports and deport undocumented immigrants -- many of whom make up a significant part of the US labor force in sectors such as agriculture.

- Interest rates steady? -

"This is a good report, but not a blockbuster one as it seems at first glance," said Robert Frick, corporate economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union.

"A big chunk of the headline number is from post-hurricane recovery, and the range of hiring remains narrow," he noted.

Yet, a surge in job growth could lead the Federal Reserve to be slower in cutting interest rates this year, as officials work to bring down inflation sustainably.

Such expectations sent Treasury yields higher early Friday.

"Strength in the labor market, recent stalling in the disinflationary trend in inflation, and the prospect of changes in tariff and immigration policies that could push inflation higher will keep the Fed cautious and patient," said Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic.

"We foresee them keeping rates steady throughout the first half of the year," she added.

For now, average hourly earnings picked up 0.3 percent from the month before in December to $35.69.

From a year ago, wages were up 3.9 percent.

Among sectors, the Labor Department said "employment trended up in health care, government, and social assistance."

Retail trade also added jobs in December after a loss in November.

"These data make at least a pause in cuts much more likely, which will push mortgage rates higher in the near term," said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

But Samuel Tombs, chief US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, believes that Fed officials are likely to conclude that monetary policy is still restrictive.

"Labor market data are so volatile and confidence intervals so wide that trends are best determined from at least six months of data," he said in a note.

© Agence France-Presse

Last year set a record for high temperatures across the mainland United States, with the nation also pummeled by a barrage of tornadoes and destructive hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a report Friday.

The announcement came as Europe's climate monitor confirmed 2024 was the hottest year globally, with temperatures so extreme that the planet breached a critical climate threshold for the first time ever.

President-elect Donald Trump, a vocal climate skeptic, is just days away from taking office and has pledged to expand fossil fuel production -- the main driver of human-caused warming -- while rolling back the green policies of his predecessor, Joe Biden.

According to NOAA, the average annual temperature across the lower 48 states and Washington was 55.5 degrees Fahrenheit (13.1 degrees Celsius) -- 3.5F above average and the highest in the agency's 130-year records.

It was also the third-wettest year since 1895 and saw the second-highest number of tornadoes on record, trailing only 2004.

Annual precipitation totaled 31.6 inches (802.1 millimeters) -- 1.7 inches above average -- while 1,735 tornadoes struck amid a punishing Atlantic hurricane season that included Hurricane Helene, the second deadliest hurricane to hit the US mainland in more than half-a-century.

Wildfires scorched 8.8 million acres, 26 percent above the 20-year average. These included the devastating Park Fire in California, the state's fourth-largest on record, which consumed nearly 430,000 acres and destroyed over 600 structures.

In total, the United States experienced 27 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, second only to the 28 recorded in 2023.

Weather extremes battered the country from all sides, with heavy rainfall mid-year and drought conditions covering 54 percent of the nation by October 29.

The last two years exceeded on average a critical warming limit for the first time as global temperatures soar "beyond what modern humans have ever experienced," the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed Friday.

This does not mean the internationally-agreed target of holding warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels has been permanently breached, but it is drawing dangerously near.

Copernicus also confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record, surpassing 2023 and extending a streak of extraordinary heat that fuelled climate extremes on all continents.

A repeat in 2025 is considered less likely, with the onset of a La Nina weather system expected to offer slight relief.

China remains the world's largest current emitter, but the United States is historically the biggest polluter, underscoring its responsibility to confront the climate crisis, according to environmental advocates.

But progress remains tepid, with US greenhouse gas emissions dipping just 0.2 percent last year, according to a study by the Rhodium Group -- leaving the country dangerously off track to meet its climate goals under the Paris agreement.

© Agence France-Presse

President-elect Donald Trump has turned toward an obsession with acquiring various neighboring lands, from Greenland and Canada to the Panama Canal, with his ally Steve Bannon even fantasizing about conquering the entire continent of North America. But the irony, wrote conservative analyst Noah Rothman for the National Review, is that such conquests were made unnecessary by the modern international order of free trade and cooperation — which Trump is now seeking to tear down.

Specifically, Trump is pushing for massive trade wars against all of the U.S.' major trade partners, which economists have raised alarms would be devastating to U.S. consumers. But, wrote Rothman, it goes deeper than that.

"There is something to be said about a particular disposition that regards territorial expansionism as a necessary tool of statecraft. It is the sort of outlook that was common to policymakers in the pre-War world — an environment typified by inviolable spheres of influence in which international free trade agreements were far rarer," wrote Rothman. "If you are inclined to see resource acquisition as a zero-sum competition for finite commodities — indeed, if you view trade as a form of war by other means, as Moscow did in the years preceding its adventurism in Ukraine — you’re more likely to see expansionist wars of conquest as vital national projects."

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Indeed, he noted, research published in recent years suggests that nations with more expansive free trade agreements are less likely to get involved in territorial wars — while more isolated ones display greater military aggression to their neighbors.

The bottom line, Rothman argued, is that Trump plans to tear down the very institutions and systems that currently let the United States freely use the resources of the countries and territories he now says America should seize for itself.

"Trump is not 'thinking big.' Rather, the president-elect and those who have entertained his thought bubble as though it was a serious proposition have demonstrated their adherence to a dangerous fallacy," Rothman concluded. "It’s no coincidence that the renewed popularity of protectionist thinking has made the prospect of war more thinkable."

President-elect Donald Trump continued his rants about the California wildfires on Wednesday afternoon by once again blaming the ordeal on Democrats.

Trump for years has claimed that California is suffering from fires because it does not properly "rake" its forests, which was a theme he continued when it comes to the current fire despite the fact that it started in a residential area.

"As of this moment, Gavin Newscum and his Los Angeles crew have contained exactly ZERO percent of the fire. It is burning at levels that even surpass last night. This is not Government. I can’t wait till January 20th!" Trump first posted.

A few moments later, he raged: "NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA. THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!"

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FEMA continues to dispel the myth that they don't have any funds to aid Americans in disasters. This particular myth began after hurricanes hit Florida and the east coast this past fall.

The Palisades Fire largely burned populated areas like Santa Monica, Malibu, and the Pacific Palisades. Fire officials said that they are investigating the cause of the blaze that began around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The California fire chief briefed the press and President Joe Biden on Wednesday, saying that in her 25-year career, she's never seen winds that strong. She explained that firefighters are being forced to lean into the wind just to continue standing and holding a firehose.

The police chief echoed the comments, saying, "I've never seen anything like this."

Southern California is suffering from drought conditions and strong Santa Ana winds. The National Weather Service announced on Monday that the winds were coming and that they would be powerful and destructive.

"The combination of low humidity, dry fuels and shifting winds has heightened the potential for spot fires and rapid expansion," Cal Fire said in an update.

Fox News senior national correspondent William La Jeunesse on Wednesday pushed back when anchor John Roberts asked him about President-elect Donald Trump's comments about devastating fires consuming California.

As La Jeunesse was covering the fires live from Malibu, Roberts asked him about why California had supposedly left itself open to such a disaster by not following Trump's recommendations for "clearing underbrush to make sure that the forests' floors were clean."

"Why does this keep happening again and again?" Roberts demanded to know.

La Jeunesse paused for a couple of seconds before answering.

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"Number one, this fire... started in a residential area," he replied. "That didn't have anything to do with the wild fires that we often see that start in the national forest or in what we call the urban-rural interface where a lot of people have moved into and where, frankly, they don't take proper care."

La Jeunesse then added that California right now has a "year-round fire season" because "we've had marginal rain the last few months."

"I think you can blame California on some things," he acknowledged. "But other things, I don't want to say it's Mother Nature, I haven't looked at the total statistics for acres burned, but in a situation like this, as I said, where it starts in the middle of a community, you're going to have problems."

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Donald Trump’s pick for chief of staff is already making clear that the incoming president’s next administration will be devoid of drama – and that she won’t tolerate grandstanders or attempts to sabotage “the mission.”

Susie Wiles, who Trump tapped two days after Election Day to become his first major staff pick, made the comments Monday in an interview with Axios days before Trump is set to return to the White House.

“I don't welcome people who want to work solo or be a star,” Wiles said in the Axios interview. “My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.”

Wiles, 67, who is referred to by her boss as the “Ice Maiden,” reportedly expressed concerns to Trump over who he would make himself available to in the Oval Office. Notably, in his last administration, Trump’s past chiefs of staff struggled to rein in a revolving door of informal advisers, friends and family members from reaching the president's ear.

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Wiles said that the administration’s focus will be on “getting off to a quick start and staying on that pace, together with an expectation of excellence every day.”

Plans include "rolling back redundant and burdensome regulations, keeping taxes low, cutting government waste through DOGE [the new Department of Government Efficiency], and most importantly, sealing the border and deporting criminals who are in this country illegally,” Wiles told Axios.

While the longtime Florida campaign operative called the first 100 days of any new administration "an artificial metric," Wiles is instead looking toward the period between the inauguration and the 2026 midterms as critical to pushing through Trump's political agenda. Republicans will have a rare trifecta of the federal government for the next two years once Trump is sworn into office.

"I have every hope that the 47 administration will not have the same number of attempts to put sand in the gears," she told Axios. "We are off to a fast start with congressional work, hiring the best people, preliminary discussion with heads of state, fine-tuning his policy agenda, and planning for the first 100 days."