In its monthly job report
released Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the private-sector added 196,000 jobs in November, seasonally adjusted, and government added 7,000 jobs for a total of 203,000. The official unemployment rate—which BLS calls U3 and calculates in a separate survey—fell to 7.0 percent, a five-year low.
The seasonally adjusted 204,000 job gain the BLS reported for October was revised to 200,000. The September figures were revised from 163,000 to 175,000.
The BLS uses an alternative calculation—U6—to determine the number of workers who have given up looking for a job but still want one as well as those Americans working part-time even though they want full-time jobs, the underemployed. U6 fell from 13.8 to 13.2 percent in November.
The civilian labor force rose by 455,000 after having fallen 720,000 in October. The employment-population ratio rose to 58.6 percent in November. The labor force participation rate rose to 63 percent.
The BLS reported that the number of officially unemployed Americans is now 10.9 million. That tally leaves out millions of discouraged workers who have given up looking for employment and others who want full-time jobs but can only find part-time work.
The number of long-term unemployed, those out of work for 27 weeks or more, remained unchanged at 4.1 million, accounting for 37.3 percent of the total unemployed.
While the situation has improved significantly in the past five years in overall jobs, the quality of many of those jobs leaves a good deal to be desired. Measured in "real" dollars, that is, inflation-adjusted dollars, the median wage of $27,519 in 2012 was $980 less than in 2007 when the Great Recession began. In fact, the median fell by $4 between 2011 and 2012. In fact, the median wage as measured by the Social Security Administration is at the 1998 level.
The reported gain may spur the Federal Reserve Board to begin tapering off its quantitative easing, its purchase of $85 billion in bonds each month.
For more details about today's jobs report, please continue reading below the fold.
Here are the official seasonally adjusted unemployment rates in November for:
African Americans—12.5 percent
Latinos—8.7percent
Asian Americans—5.3 percent (not seasonally adjusted)
Whites—6.2percent
American Indians—Not counted on a monthly basis
Women—6.2 percent
Men—6.7 percent
Among other news in the October job report:
• Professional services: +35,000
• Transportation and warehousing : +31,000
• Leisure & hospitality: +18,000
• Health care: +28,000
• Retail trade: +22,000
• Construction: +17,000
• Manufacturing: +27,000
• Average weekly manufacturing hours rose to 0.1 to 41 hours.
• Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose 4 cents from October's revised figure to $24.14
• Average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees rose 3 cents to $20.31
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in November for the previous 10 years.
November 2003: + 13,000
November 2004: + 65,000
November 2005: +335,000
November 2006: +205,000
November 2007: +111,000
November 2008: - 775,000
November 2009: - 21,000
November 2010: +144,000
November 2011: +174,000
November 2012: +247,000
November 2013:
The BLS jobs report is the product of a pair of surveys, one of more than 410,000 business establishments called Current Employment Statistics, and one called the Current Population Survey, which questions 60,000 householders each month. The establishment survey determines how many new jobs were added. It is always calculated on a seasonally adjusted basis determined by a frequently tweaked formula. The BLS report only provides a snapshot of what's happening at a single point in time.
It's important to understand that the jobs-created-last-month-numbers that it reports are not "real." Not because of a conspiracy, but because statisticians apply formulas to the raw data, estimate the number of jobs created by the "birth" and "death" of businesses, and use other filters to fine-tune the numbers. And, always good to remember, in the fine print, they tell us that the actual number of newly created jobs reported is actually plus or minus 100,000.
