In the last official new jobs tally before the November, the government reported Friday that the U.S. economy had generated 250,000 seasonally adjusted new jobs in October. This was 25 percent more than what analysts earlier in the week had indicated would likely be the case. The headline unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent, the lowest level in 49 years. Of the total, the private sector generated 246,000 new jobs and the public sector 4,000. Another measurement, which gauges both unemployment and underemployment, fell 0.1 point to 7.4 percent. For workers with a high school education or less, however, the unemployment rate rose. Workers without a high school education have triple the unemployment rate of those with a college degree.
September was the 97th consecutive month of job expansion.
Because more complete data become available over time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics includes in each of its monthly jobs report revisions of the count for the previous two months. Friday’s report revised September’s count of new jobs from 134,000 to 118,000 and August’s from 270,000 to 286,000.
Donald Trump can be counted on the brag about these numbers, but it should be noted that in the 21 months he has been in office, the average monthly calculation of new jobs generated has been 193,000. In President Obama’s final 21 months in office, the monthly average was 212,000.
The BLS reported that average hourly wages have risen 83 cents over the 12-month period from October 2017, or 3.1 percent. That is the best showing since the economy began expanding nine and a half years ago. As of last month, the annual rate of Inflation is running at 2.3 percent. While that’s good news for workers, it may give investors reason to worry about inflation, which could affect the currently volatile stock market. The New York Times reports:
The economy has historically not played an outsize role in midterm elections, and this political season, border control, health care and Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court have gobbled up airtime. Still, “jobs and the economy” was cited more frequently than other issues as the most important in a survey conducted in early October for The New York Times by the online research platform SurveyMonkey. [...]
The report also offered evidence that sidelined workers are not only feeling optimistic about their job prospects but are actually finding work, which is why the jobless rate did not dip despite the big payroll gains.
The civilian workforce rose by 711,000 after rising by 150,000 in September and falling 469,000 in August. The labor force participation rate rose to 62.9 percent in October. The employment-population ratio rose to 60.6 percent.
Each monthly BLS jobs report bases the job count on the Current Employment Survey of 147,000 business establishments and the unemployment rate on the Current Population Survey of 60,000 households. The final day of surveying usually falls around the 12th of each month, which means data in this month’s jobs report actually measure jobs gained in the last part of September and the first part of October.
Here are some more details from the October jobs report:
Unemployment rates differ by race and sex. [Percentages in brackets are for September]. Adult men: 3.5 percent [3.4]; Adult women: 3.4 percent [3.3]; Whites: 3.3 percent [3.3] ; Blacks: 6.2 percent [6.0]; Asians: 3.2 percent [3.5]; Hispanics: 4.4 percent [4.5]; American Indians: (not counted monthly).
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose in October by 7 cents an hour to $22.89.
• Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls in October rose 5 cents an hour to $27.30.
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payroll rose to 34.5 hours in October.
• The manufacturing work week in October fell 0.1 to 40.8 hours.
September Job Gains and Losses for selected categories:
- Professional services: 35,000
- Temporary help services: 3,300
- Transportation & warehousing: 24,800
- Financial activities: 7,000
- Leisure & hospitality: 42,000
- Information: 7,000
- Education and health services: 44,000
- Health care & social assistance: 46,700
- Retail trade: 2,400
- Construction: 30,000
- Manufacturing: 32,000
- Mining and Logging: 5,000
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in the previous decade compared with this October’s gain of 250,000 jobs.
October 2008: -475,000
October 2009: -209,000
October 2010: 267,000
October 2011: 209,000
October 2012: 153,000
October 2013: 210,000
October 2014: 255,000
October 2015: 351,000
October 2016: 140,000
October 2017: 271,000