Economist Justin Wolfers this morning highlighted one more astounding fact about this morning's surprisingly strong jobs report:
It's a record: The U.S. economy has never before delivered 50 straight months of payrolls growth. (Previous record: 48, ending in mid-1990.)
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) December 5, 2014
If you watch the job market closely, over the last year, you've heard journalists (this one included) and economists and pundits bemoan the constant ok-but-not-great monthly job growth. And while job reports as upbeat as this latest one are rare, job growth has, at the very least, been consistently positive for more than four years now.
Of course, the US job market had a big hole to dig itself out of after the recession, but given four years of bumps — an EU crisis, sequestration, a government shutdown — the fact that we've only gone up is something to cheer.