Amy Scott

The Labor Department says employers added just 50,000 jobs in December.

That's adjusted for seasonality.

And it's down slightly from the month before.

With me to break it down are Catherine Rampell at the Bulwark and MS Now and Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

Hello, you two.

Hi Amy.

All right, Katherine, let's start with you.

Not only was hiring pretty weak last month, but weaker than we thought for the prior two months as well.

How would you characterize the job market right now based on this report?

It's not so great.

If you look under the hood, we have lost jobs in most industries year over year.

Manufacturing has been doing quite poorly.

A number of other industries have been doing quite poorly.

The only industries that seem to be doing okay, if you take that 12 month long view, is

are basically health care and social insurance, leisure, private education, just a few areas of services.

But blue collar jobs in particular, not doing so great.

And there seems to be a fair amount of fragility in this economy.

I mean, and yet, Heather, the unemployment rate is still pretty low at 4.4 percent.

Wage growth improved last month.

How concerning is this overall slowdown in hiring in that context?