Friday, November 7, 2014

The October Jobs Report

October's unemployment figures, out this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are right on track with the recent history. The economy added 214,000 new jobs for the month, and the unemployment rate ticked down a tenth of a percentage point, to 5.8 percent. The average monthly job gain for the past 12 months has been 222,000.

One downside: Many of the jobs are being created in relatively low-paying areas, such as food and drinking establishments (which added 41,000 jobs) and retail (which added 27,000 jobs). Temp services added 15,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the information sector lost 4,000 jobs on the month.

The past two months' jobs figures were also revised: September went up from 248,000 to 256,000, and August's from 180,000 to 203,000. The new August figure means that we've now had nine months in a row where the economy added at least 200,000 jobs, stretching back to January.

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