November’s payroll growth is stable, we’ll have to wait and see what happens with revisions
It’s nearly Christmas time, and being that it’s the first Friday of the month, I figured I would try and brighten up your day with something truly special: the gift of a BLS employment situation report. I didn’t write it, or gather any of the information that’s in it, but I will summarize it for you. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics may do all of the heavy lifting, but they don’t organize the data into neat little tidbits for your reading enjoyment. On that note, I’ll stop rambling and start writing about what you’re really interested in…
The employment numbers for November are up! And October’s aren’t down! The employment situation report released this morning for the month of November shows that the nation added 94,000 jobs overall. What’s more is that the unusually high numbers from October (+166,000 positions) haven’t been dramatically revised…yet. I say “yet” because the numbers from September have been revised again in the latest payroll employment overview. Let’s review the month’s downfall:
Original projection for September: +110,000 jobs
Secondary projection for September: +96,000 jobs
Latest projection for September: +44,000 jobs
BLS employees seem to have a hard time making up their minds, or adding, and this doesn’t bode well for the longevity and accuracy of future reports. All I know is that the BLS report for November lists October’s revised job growth as +170,000 positions, which is great news if it stays that way through the next few months (and doesn’t take a turn for the worst like September did).
With solid job growth of 94,000 positions in November, the national unemployment rate has remained stable at 4.7 percent. Total employment in the U.S. increased by nearly 700,000 people to 146.7 million, which helped boost the employment-population ratio for November to 63.0 percent.
Professional and business services, which added 65,000 positions in October, continued to climb in November with another 30,000 jobs. In this sector, the computer systems design industry added nearly 12,000 jobs, while management and technical consulting services gained over 6,000. Health care and food services, which both typically contribute close to 30,000 jobs a month, added 15,000 and 17,000 jobs, respectively. These smaller gains were offset by growth in social assistance (+10,000), accommodations (+11,000), and retail trade (+24,000).
The big losses were no surprise, with industries related to home building and financing suffering the most in November. The construction sector lost 24,000 jobs, manufacturing employment dropped by 11,000, and the credit intermediation industry reported a loss of 13,000 positions. The average workweek remained the same (at 33.8 hours), while the average earnings for American workers this past month rose eight cents an hour. This sharp increase in wages brings the average weekly income for November to $595.89 and raises concerns about inflation.
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