The U.S. unemployment rate fell much more than expected in November, hitting a nine-year low, as the economy added 178,000 new jobs in the month, U.S. government data showed on Friday.

The report was “virtually icing the cake on a Dec. 14 Fed rate hike,” said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

Markets had a mixed reaction to the latest figures. U.S. stock futures US:ESZ6 held modest losses, Treasury yields fell and the dollar retreated in the immediate wake of the report.

Wall Street had forecast an increase of 200,000 in nonfarm payrolls for the month, according to a MarketWatch survey. The unemployment rate had been expected to hold steady at 4.9%.

Despite the strong drop in the unemployment rate, some details of the report were seen as soft.

The payrolls count over the prior two months was revised lower by a cumulative 2,000.

And average hourly earnings slumped 0.1% in November after a sharp 0.4% rise in the prior month. This was the first decline since December 2014. Earnings are up at a 2.5% annual rate.

Read:November unemployment rate drop ‘not all good news,’ say economists

An interest-rate hike this month is seen as a done deal. The big question for economists is how many Fed rate hikes will come in 2017.

“Rates are going up ... likely at a faster pace next year than this year, [though] admittedly that’s a pretty low bar to hurdle,” Guatieri said.

“The economy is close to full employment, and the Fed wants to start gradually raising interest rates before the economy reaches full employment and wage pressures accelerate too much and spark much higher inflation,” said Gus Faucher, deputy chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group. Faucher said he expects two Fed interest-rate increases in 2017 and three in 2018.

In November, private-sector payrolls rose by 156,000. Job growth continued in professional and business services and in health care. Government employment rose by 22,000 in the month.

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The big drop in the jobless rate, which had barely changed in the past year, came as the civilian labor force fell by 226,000. The number of unemployed people fell by 387,000 and 160,000 people found jobs.

A broader measure of unemployment fell to 9.3% from 9.5%, the lowest level since April 2008. This measure is the so-called U6 rate that includes part-time workers who can’t find a good full-time position and discouraged job seekers who have recently given up looking for work.