Bosses kept hiring in spite of predictions. I'm David Brancaccio. There's news this

morning that hiring in America got unexpectedly stronger in December with 216,000 more people on payrolls.

Experts thought the unemployment rate would get a tad worse.

Instead, it held steady at a very low rate of 3.7%.

Let's consult Christopher Lowe, Chief Economist at FHN Financial in New York on a jobs

report that many financial players see as stronger than expected.

I don't even know that it necessarily was stronger than expected because there was a big downward

division to October and November.

You know, these numbers bounce around from month to month.

What you want to look at is what is the longer term trend doing?

The bond market is really nervous because they're counting on March rate cuts and the

Fed has given every indication they're not ready to start cutting rates that soon

But they will cut rates this year. Where was some of the hiring? It was mostly on the service side health and education and leisure and hospitality, which have

been the two biggest job gainers.

There were a few job gains in construction, a little bit in manufacturing, one of the other themes that's evident

in the employment report, aggregate hours worked rising at a slower rate than GDP. And what that means is productivity growth and what that means

is rising living standards which obviously is a good thing.

Yeah that's what we're looking for.

FHN chief economist Christopher Lowe.

Now, they used to advertise better living through chemistry.

In Las Vegas in the coming days, the subtext seems to be better living through silicon it is the annual

CES extravaganza what used to be called the consumer electronic show this year

...