Transportation sector gains 6400 jobs in November

Fed policy makers will use jobs data to help them decide whether they should raise their benchmark interest rate for the first time since 2006.

A sharp decrease in a worker’s wages when forced to change jobs is not accounted for.

US services sector activity slowed in November but a resilient labor market suggested the economy remained on a steady growth path.

The transportation sector gained 6,400 jobs in November as the national unemployment remained steady at 5 percent, according to statistics released by the Department of Labor on Friday. The pace of job growth was similar to that over the past year and somewhat slower than the pace in 2014.

The U-5 rate includes U-4 plus all other “marginally attached” workers. With the inclusion of long-term discouraged workers, the SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate, defined as the U-7 rate was defined before 1994, is 22.8 percent.

“Claims are low and people’s expectations of the labor market are improving”, Joe Carson, director of global economic research at AllianceBernstein LP in NY, said before the report.

What this means is that the official unemployment rate can fluctuate because discouraged workers (who are not considered to be part of the labor force in the U-3 measurement) who re-enter the labor force will cause the U-3 rate to spike. The chart below decomposes employment growth into contributions from each of these factors. Of this number, 157,028, 000 participated in the labor force based on the BLS definition. However, the sharp decline in our unemployment rate-reflecting the depth of the recession and the strength of our job market recovery-has contributed more to employment growth than in any of the past five expansions. United States stocks and Treasury debt prices were trading lower. Across the 17 industries shown below, the correlation between the most recent one-month percent change and the average percent change over the last twelve months was 0.85, somewhat above the average correlation over the previous two years. Claims figures are often volatile around holiday periods.

Stocks surged today, fueled by a November jobs report that showed a gain of 211,000 positions.