U.S. employers increased their pace of hiring in October, with declining COVID-19 infections and demand for workers amid widespread shortages helping bolster labor market activity.
The Labor Department released its October jobs report Friday morning and here are the main metrics compared with estimates compiled by Bloomberg:
- Change in non-farm payrolls, October: plus-531,000 versus plus-450,000 expected; plus-194,000 in September
- Unemployment rate: 4.6 percent versus 4.7 percent expected; 4.8 percent in September
- Average hourly earnings, month-over-month: 0.4 percent versus 0.4 percent expected; 0.6 percent in September.
- Average hourly earnings, year-over-year: 4.9 percent. versus 4.9 percent expected; 4.6 percent in September.
Non-farm payrolls posted their biggest jump in a single month since July. Job growth for the past two months was also upwardly revised. The Labor Department said Friday that September payrolls increased by 312,000, up from the disappointing 194,000 previously reported. And employers in August brought back 483,000 jobs, versus the 366,000 posted in the prior report.
“Our economy is starting to work for more Americans. Thanks to the economic plan we put through in Congress earlier this year and a successful vaccine deployment, America continues to add jobs at a record pace. In this historically strong recovery, unemployment has fallen again today,” President Joe Biden said during a press conference on Friday. “Our economy is on the move.”
Though payrolls have grown in every month so far in 2021, the economy remains more than 4 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic levels following plunges in employment between March and April of 2020. And the civilian labor force was still down by nearly 3 million individuals compared to February 2020 as of October.
Click here to read the whole story from Emily McCormick at Yahoo Finance.
