From the Joint Economic Committee:

December Employment and Unemployment: The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a report today on employment and unemployment for December (BLS pdf summary available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf ).
Highlights of the report:
· Non-farm payroll employment increased by 167,000 new jobs in December, following increases of 154,000 in November and 203,000 in October.
December marks the 40th consecutive month with payroll job gains. Over that period, close to 7.3 million new payroll jobs have been created, generating a robust average of 182,225 new payroll jobs per month.Over the past three months, payroll job gains have averaged a robust 175,000 per month.In 2006, payroll employment increased by 1.8 million, generating a healthy average of 153,000 new jobs created per month. · The unemployment rate remained at 4.5% in December.
The unemployment rate remains well below the recent peak of 6.3% in June 2003.