WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The jobs report for December, the highlight of the economic data due in the first full week of January, is expected to show nonfarm payrolls expanded by 204,000, according to a MarketWatch survey of economists.

“That’s pretty good job growth. It looks to us that the labor market has substantially recovered,” said Rob Martin, an economist at Barclays in New York whose own forecast calls for a gain of 225,000.

Even with weakness seen during the summer, job gains in 2015 will top 2.5 million, making it the second-best calendar year for U.S. job growth in this millennium, after last year’s 3.1 million. The last time more jobs were created in a two-year period was at the height of the dot-com boom, in 1998-1999.

The December totals should get a shot in the arm from the warm weather, said Ted Wieseman, an economist at Morgan Stanley. He forecasts an overall gain of 215,000.

“We’re assuming the mild winter is going to provide some temporary boost to job growth in the business services and leisure sectors in December,” Wieseman said in a note to clients.

The job data will be released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Friday, making it the last monthly jobs report before the presidential primary season kicks off with the Iowa caucus on Feb. 1.

The domestic economy is shrugging off weakness in the oil patch and manufacturing, Barclays’s Martin said in an interview.

“We’re pretty bullish on the labor market. We can expect job gains in the 200,000-225,000 range going forward,” he said.

Many economists say there is still slack in the labor force, pointing out that 15.7 million Americans can’t find a full-time job and that millions of workers under the age of 65 have just stopped looking for work.

Martin dismissed these concerns, saying that the percentage of people working part time involuntarily is “declining normally” at an accelerating pace. The decline in labor-force participation is mainly due to retiring baby boomers and younger workers staying in school longer, he added.

Barclays sees the unemployment rate, now 5%, falling to 4.3% by the end of 2016 and 3.7% by the end of 2017. This will put pressure on the Federal Reserve to continue to raise interest rates as the central bank is “a tiny bit behind the curve,” Martin said.

The U.S. central bank on Wednesday will publish the minutes of its December meeting, where it voted to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade, and economists will be looking “to infer the strength of support for further hikes and the likely pace,” said economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in a research note.

The market still sees a much lower end-2016 funds rate target than do Fed officials. The average rate expected by Fed officials is 1.4%. Financial markets put the greatest odds on rates at 1%.

There will also be a flurry of key economic indicators, including the Institute for Supply Management’s December survey of American manufacturers. The survey turned in its worst performance in November with the manufacturing index falling to 48.6% from 50.1% in October.

Economists expect only a partial rebound to 49.1%. Readings under 50% indicate more companies are contracting their business instead of expanding. The reading could get extra scrutiny after the Chicago Business Barometer, also known as the Chicago PMI, showed an unexpected decline as economic activity in the Midwest contracted at the fastest pace in more than six years in December.