them working longer hours, which is like the equivalent of another 300,000 plus jobs. there was a strong labor input and companies were having their workers making a lot of goods. as you said, it suggests much better momentum at the end of the year than some of the other reports and certainly than some of the pessimism has has overtaken the markets. neil: all of that is very true and obvious, but it s the mirror opposite of yesterday. so given the extreme swings, which is accurate? i don t know yet. i ll tell you monday, neil. you re right. the market has been very schizophrenic. michelle, i m a pessimist now. the thing that i do like is the strength in numbers. you pointed out the broad-based nature of it. we ve had the numbers before. yes, maybe not 312, but we ve
neil: scott martin, when it comes to the federal reserve, he was asked point blank about this. jerome powell said even if the president asked him to resign he wouldn t. what did you think of that? a good answer. he s more confident. with the market going up after his markets, gosh, you can a tribute 35 southbound points to powell and the group today. a nice little reunion with bernanke up there, too. haven t seen him in awhile. i have to forget neil: it was like a monetary avengers team. powell and like a high school reunion except i was made fun of. what is funny, too, to michelle s point, i don t see inflation anywhere. that s what i don t get about the fed. they ve been so concerned about inflation, reducing the balance sheet. yet powell talked about until today, this outlike for inflation that i don t see. i think they have room to pause here. the market is telling them to do that, if they do pause going forward, you ll see the stocks
overstated here, this was across the board. every key sector of the economy added jobs. think about it, healthcare more than 50,000. construction, 38,000. we saw restaurants and bars, 41,000. manufacturing, 32,000. retail 24,000. we saw the prior months also had an uptick in activity from the prior period as well. the average gains had been in excess of 250,000 jobs that kind of pace shows a pick up in activity. what would that mean and does that mean that whatever is ailing china is unique to china and not us? traders joining us with michelle jerrod and scott martin. michelle, how broad based is this? as you said, neil, it was across the board in terms of job growth. another thing that is impressive that economists like to look at, not only were more people working but the people that are working, their companies had