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The economy added more than two million new jobs in 2019 for the ninth straight year led by the usual suspects: health care, professional firms and restaurants.
Health-care providers — hospitals, doctors’ offices, medical labs — created almost 400,000 new jobs last year. The medical profession has been expanding rapidly for decades to handle an aging population and a retiring baby boomer generation.
White-collar professional companies in fields such as engineering, technology and legal services also created almost 400,000 jobs, though there was a big drop off from 2018.
Read: U.S. creates 145,000 jobs in December as hiring slows and wage growth softens
Restaurants, part of the broader category of leisure and hospitality, also did a lot of hiring.
Other industries fell on tougher times.
Manufacturers cut hiring after the trade war with China spawned an industrywide slump in the U.S. and abroad. Shippers and warehousing firms also cut back on hiring and energy producers shed jobs.
Read: Jobless claims fall for 4th week in a row to 214,000, back near postrecession lows
Construction companies wanted to hire more workers, but they face a shortage of carpenters, framers and the like. Job gains were cut in half last year.
The good news was, the shortage of labor has sharply boosted wages in the construction industry. They’ve climbed almost 16% in the past five years to an average of $31.11 an hour in 2019.
Read: ‘Yikes’ — wage growth called ‘incredibly disappointing’ in jobs report
The highest paying field in 2019 was information, a broad category that includes the media, public relations, entertainment and communications such as cable and wireless. It was the only industry in which average hourly pay topped $40 an hour ($42.34).
The lowest-paid occupations were in leisure and hospitality and socials services. Both fields pay less than $20 an hour on average.
