Economists lauded Friday’s employment report as the U.S. added 128,000 new jobs, handily beating expectations of a lower number affected by a strike at General Motors GM, -0.85% .

Read more about the October jobs data from MarketWatch.

• Daniel Zhao of Glassdoor described it as a “nice October surprise” and an overall positive report.

• Sal Guatieri of BMO Capital Markets said U.S. companies’ picking up the pace of hiring suggested “the worst might be over for the economic slowdown, while the Fed’s pivot toward pausing might be appropriate.”

Read:Fed’s Powell to markets: Don’t bank on more interest-rate cuts.

• The president of the Minneapolis Fed weighed in with a one-sentence tweet after the report.

• Aaron Sojourner of the University of Minnesota pointed out that next month’s report will see strike-affected GM jobs return as new jobs.

• Michael Pearce of Capital Economics called wages “the one soft spot in the report,” as they rose 0.2% in October. “In year-on-year terms, wages are rising by just 3%, not fast enough to put meaningful upward pressure on inflation,” he said.

• Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute said the report reflected well on the Federal Reserve. “Today’s jobs report strongly suggests the Federal Reserve has done the right thing by lowering interest rates to help ensure that the recovery, which began more than 10 years ago, is sustained, rather than dying out before many low- and middle-income households get a chance to really feel its benefits,” she said.