Friday’s US nonfarm payrolls showed a solid headline figure but some mixed details. On the one hand, the +428k increase in payrolls marks a full year with monthly gains over 400k, the longest stretch of such job gains going back to 1939. {chart} In particular, employment as measured by the household survey fell by 353k, which was coupled with a 0.2 percentage-point decline in the labor force participation rate, erasing the previous two months’ gains. Market participants focused on the lower-than-expected average hourly earnings figure (on a month-on-month basis, which isn’t in my table; I guess I’ll have to revise it ... (full story)