Obama get's a great unemployment report. Labor market improves and additional workers return while non farm payroll increases by 171,000 and the unemployment
rate stays at 7.9%.
The big story was the positive sign that people are coming
back to the labor force as shown by the increase in non-farm payrolls (171,000)
while the unemployment rate also rose slightly (7.8% to 7.9%). The household data survey reported that the
labor force expanded by 578,000 and 410,000 found jobs.
Also the 171K figure was double the 81,000 NFP jobs added
since the end of the recession. The
figure can vary by 100,000 jobs in either direction. Economists were predicting 150K new jobs at
the end of the recession but now forecast about 100K new jobs each month.
Mitt Romney said, “Today’s increase in the unemployment rate
is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill.” Obama praised
the number but said there was more work to do. Romney had little to complain about in a broadly positive report.
The black unemployment rate jumped to 14.3%. The 1% increase was not an issue since 387,000
black people returned to the labor market.
Black teenage unemployment was 40%.
Unemployment rose slightly for Hispanic/Latinos to
10.0%. The white rate remained fixed at 7.0%
The long-term unemployed (27 weeks or more) was 5.002 million
people which represents 40% of the
unemployed. The median duration of unemployment was 20 weeks while the average duration was 40
weeks. So, the hardcore unemployed
stayed unemployed much longer than average.
The “work part-time,
wants full-time” (WPWF) number was 8.3 million.
These people are considered under employed. About 2,433 million workers were marginally attached to the labor
pool. They have looked for work in the
last 12 months but not in the last four weeks. And
there were 813K discouraged workers (part of marginally attached) who are not
looking because they believe there is no jobs for them.
All three numbers: WPWF, marginally attached and discouraged
workers, have been slowly dropping for the last three months as the labor
market improves.
Non-Farm Payrolls
As we mention in the summary, non-farm payrolls add 171,000
jobs. Private sector hiring added
184,000 jobs (vs. 128,000 last month) and government employment lost -13,000 jobs.
Job growth was broadly spread accross all areas but retail trade, business services, leisure services and healthcare had large increases. Other key sectors had increases including construction (17K) and manufacturing(13K). Information technology (1K) and finance(4K) were flat.
The federal government lost -6,000 positions, state governments lost -7,000 positions and local government added 3,000 position for a net loss of -10K jobs.
Non-farm payrolls were revised for August upward by 50,000
(from 142K to 192K) and upwards for September by plus 24,000 from (114K to 148K).
That’s an increase of 84,000 jobs!
Average work week was unchanged at 34.4 hours and wages dropped 0.01 cents in September. I can't believe wages are dropping. We have to look at this further.
.
ADP reported an increase in private payrolls of 158,000
positions for July.
US Monster Employment Index moved up to 156 in October from
153 in September. Hiring was up 3% compared to same month last year.
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