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Employers added 227,000 jobs in January, the best gain since September, the Labor Department said Friday. That was significantly higher than last year’s average monthly gain of 187,000 jobs. . . the jobless rate—or the share of Americans in the labor force who are unemployed—rose to 4.8% from 4.7% a month earlier. More Americans came off the sidelines and actively looked for work. That helped to raise the count of unemployed but it could be a sign of increased optimism about the prospect of finding jobs.

New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston and Dallas are home to half of new business startups—and Americans are increasingly unwilling to move to such hotspots for the jobs they are spawning. At no time in recent history has entrepreneurship been so heavily concentrated in a handful of big cities, according to a bipartisan team of economic policy advisers at the Washington research and policy shop.

The Trump order aims to prevent such waste by requiring the agencies to repeal two old rules for every new one they publish. . . the text of the order suggests that for every dollar of new cost imposed on the private economy, each agency will have to find two dollars of burden to relieve. . . many civilized countries use such budgets to manage the regulatory state and stay competitive. Canada requires every rule that creates another hour of paperwork for business compliance to be offset one for one. The United Kingdom and Australia have harder versions that require the costs of new rules to be offset by deregulation of comparable net value.

“The total number of union members fell for both private- and public-sector workers last year, the first overall decline in four years, the Labor Department said Thursday. New policies from the Trump administration threaten to put more downward pressure on organized labor’s last stronghold, government employees, but might help stem membership losses among manufacturing and construction workers. Only 10.7% of workers were union members last year, down from 11.1% in 2015, and from more than 20% in the early 1980s. It is unclear whether any of Republican President Donald Trump’s policies could reverse this decadeslong slide in private-sector union membership, especially when unions were unable to gain traction with a union-friendly Democrat in the White House.”

“U.S. economic output decelerated in the final three months of 2016 to a 1.9% growth rate, returning after a brief spurt to the stubbornly lackluster pace that has prevailed through most of the current expansion and which President Donald Trump has pledged to double. Growth of gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the economy, exceeded the pace of growth in a slow first half of 2016, but marked a slowdown from the third quarter’s seasonally and inflation adjusted 3.5% growth rate. More broadly, it was in line with the 2% growth rates that have made this the slowest economic expansion in post World War II history.”

The paper, by Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University, argues aging populations have not had a negative effect on the growth of per-capita gross domestic product. In fact, some aging countries have seen faster growth. . . The economists find that countries where the population over age 50 is growing faster than the 20- to 49-year-old population have been more likely to acquire robots to do a worker’s job. Those investments make it easier for firms to replace departing workers even when there are fewer younger workers to take the retirees’ place.

Jed Kolko, chief economist at job site Indeed, used Census Bureau data to dissect the occupational, educational and geographical background of immigrants in the U.S. He shows the most recent arrivals—those who came to the U.S. in the past five years—gravitating to jobs as medical scientists, software developers, physical scientists and economists. By contrast, earlier immigrants were more likely to land in blue-collar jobs at beauty salons, on construction sites or operating sewing machines.

By the numbers, China looks like it’s on the way to dominating the global electric car industry. But subsidies and inferior technology threaten to leave it behind the rest of the world despite the big numbers. Chinese electric passenger car sales rose by 50% in 2016 to more than 300,000 cars, according to China’s state-backed auto manufacturers association, overtaking the U.S. China is targeting more than 4 million electric cars on the road over the next four years. Outside China, about 260,000 electric cars were sold world-wide last year. With electric cars, China is running into a familiar problem. It can put up big numbers but quality is uneven and subsidies spur much of the production. Last year alone, China spent nearly $15 billion on electric cars and charging stations. The production numbers paint a misleading picture of the industry. China has mostly stuck with inferior, indigenous technology, leaving the market dominated by low-cost, low-range electric car models and inconsistent charging-station standards. Anecdotally, consumers complain of flimsy and tiny cars that wouldn’t pass crash tests and batteries quickly going bad. It isn’t surprising that the main buyers of electric vehicles have been taxi fleets and government entities. 

Executives have grown more optimistic about growth, in part anticipating that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration and Republican congressional majorities will bring regulatory rollbacks, corporate tax breaks and increased infrastructure spending.

Minimum wages will increase in 20 states at the start of the year, a shift that will lift pay for millions of individuals and shed light on a long-running debate about whether mandated pay increases at the bottom do more harm or good for workers.

Top officers of the largest U.S. pension fund want to lower their investment targets, a move that would trigger more pain for cash-strapped cities across California and set an increasingly cautious tone for those who manage retirement assets around the country.

Panasonic Corp. is introducing convenience-store checkout machines that can scan and bag items on their own, joining Amazon.com Inc. in the push for more retail automation.

Barely half of 30-year-olds earn more than their parents did at a similar age, a research team found, an enormous decline from the early 1970s when the incomes of nearly all offspring outpaced their parents. Even rapid economic growth won’t do much to reverse the trend.

Exports fell 1.8% from September, the largest drop since January, and imports rose 1.3% in October. The fall in exports included declining shipments of soybeans, corn and consumer goods while the import rise included stronger domestic demand for foreign-made pharmaceuticals, cellphones and capital goods.

The rule requires that up to 25% of units in rental properties and up to 40% in for-sale projects meet affordability guidelines. Alternatively, developers can pay a fee to the city. . . Developers must pay construction wages on par with those required for public-works projects, hire 30% of the workforce from within city limits, set aside 10% of jobs for certain disadvantaged workers living within 5 miles of the project and ensure 60% of workers have experience on par with graduates of a union apprenticeship program.