The November unemployment report came out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning, and it continued the trend we've been seeing for a couple of months now: Job creation for the month was relatively solid but unspectacular, at 120,000 new jobs added to the economy. But there's a difference this time. Although that's about the number of new jobs economists say we need to tread water in the employment figures, the official unemployment number dropped in November from 9.0 percent to 8.6 percent. That's the lowest unemployment has been since March 2009.
What happened? The rate dropped in large part because the number of jobs added in October got officially revised upward, from 80,000 to 100,000, as well as the number from September, which went from 158,000 to a whopping 210,000. That makes four straight months in which the government has ended up revising the new-jobs figure upward.
Perhaps even more encouraging, the broadest measures of unemployment are dropping as well. Adding part-time workers seeking full-time work to get to the government's U-6 figure, which includes both the unemployed and underemployed, that number dropped in November to 15.6 percent, from 16.2 percent the previous month. All told, today's report continues a string of good economic news from the past week or so that should bring some cheer to everyone as we head into the holiday season.
No comments:
Post a Comment