In a weaker than expected report, the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday that the economy’s private sector generated 161,000 seasonally adjusted new jobs in November, while the public sector shed 6,000 jobs, for a net gain of 155,000. The median forecast for new jobs by analysts surveyed by Dow Jones earlier this week was far more at 198,000.
The headline unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent for the third consecutive month, the lowest level in 49 years. Another BLS gauge, which measures both unemployment and underemployment—and which many economists say gives a better overall picture of the labor situation—rose 0.2 point to 7.6 percent.
November marked the 98th consecutive month of job expansion.
Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics revises the new job count for the previous two months as more complete data become available. Friday’s report revised the October count from 250,000 to 237,000, and September’s count from 118,000 to 119,000.
In the 22 months Donald Trump has been in office, the average monthly count of new jobs has been 191,000. In President Obama’s final 22 months in office, the monthly average was 217,000.
Average wages rose slightly in November. The BLS reported that over the past 12 months, wages have climbed by 81 cents, a gain of 3.1 percent against an inflation rate that was an annualized 2.5 percent in October, the last month for which data are available.
The BLS counts as employed anyone who has worked any number of hours during the survey period. During recessions, many more people work part time, taking whatever jobs they can find, or because their full-time hours have been cut back. Here’s Doug Short’s look at full-time and part-time since the year 2000, with the latest available data from October 2018:
The civilian workforce rose by 133,000 in November after rising by 711,000 in October and 150,000 in September. The labor force participation rate remained unchanged at 62.9 percent in November. The employment-population ratio also remained unchanged at 60.6 percent.
The job count each month is calculated from the Current Employment Survey of 147,000 business establishments. The unemployment rate is derived from the Current Population Survey of 60,000 households. The final day of surveying usually falls around the 12th of each month, which means the data in this month’s jobs report actually measure jobs gained in the last part of October and the first part of November.
Here are additional details from the November jobs report:
Unemployment rates differ by race and sex. [Percentages in brackets are for October]. Adult men: 3.3 percent [3.5]; Adult women: 3.4 percent [3.4]; Whites: 3.4 percent [3.3] ; Blacks: 5.9 percent [6.2]; Asians: 2.7 percent [3.2]; Hispanics: 4.5 percent [4.4]; American Indians: (not counted monthly).
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose in November by 7 cents an hour to $22.95.
• Average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls in November rose 6 cents an hour to $27.35.
• Average work week for all employees on non-farm payroll fell to 34.4 hours in November.
• The manufacturing work week in November remained unchanged at 40.8 hours.
November Job Gains and Losses for selected categories:
- Professional services: 32,000
- Temporary help services: 8,300
- Transportation & warehousing: 25,400
- Financial activities: 6,000
- Leisure & hospitality: 15,000
- Information: -8,000
- Education and health services: 34,000
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- Health care & social assistance: 40,100
- Retail trade: 18,200
- Construction: 5,000
- Manufacturing: 27,000
- Mining and Logging: -3,000
Here's what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in the previous decade compared with this November’s gain of 155,000 jobs.
November 2008: -759,000
November 2009: 12,000
November 2010: 129,000
November 2011: 145,000
November 2012: 130,000
November 2013: 221,000
November 2014: 307,000
November 2015: 264,000
November 2016: 172,000
November 2017: 216,000