Does November jobs report signal December interest rate hike?

The US economy added 211,000 jobs in November according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, higher than the 200,000 predicted by analysts.

Still, economists expect the creation of millions of new jobs and a falling unemployment rate to put more upward pressure on wages in the near future. Figures from the payroll company ADP show private sector employers added 217,000 jobs in November – the most for five months.

Average hourly earnings are forecast rising 0.2 percent after increasing 0.4 percent in October.

A Fed rate hike typically lifts interest rates for mortgages, auto loans and other borrowing, though those increases might not occur immediately.

On Thursday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen hit a positive note on the economy when she testified before lawmakers, and described how it had majorly met the criteria set by the United States central bank for the Fed’s first rate increase since June 2006. Of those marginally attached workers, 594,000 were counted as discouraged workers, those not looking for work because they didn’t think that there were jobs available – the same as a year earlier.

“Over the past 3 months, the economy has created an average of +218k jobs per months”.

The Fed is scheduled to announce its next monetary policy decision following a two-day meeting concluding on December 16th.

Friday’s jobs report is getting extra attention, as it is the last major United States data point the Federal Reserve will review before it meets later this month to consider raising interest rates. Revisions also added 35,000 more jobs in September and October than were originally reported. The unemployment rate held at 5 percent.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5 percent.

The Federal Reserve didn’t need healthy job gains to push ahead with a rate hike in December.

“We cleared the last hurdle for a rate increase”.

“There is no doubt that if we had to intensify the use of our instruments to ensure that we achieve our price stability mandate, we would”, he said in a speech at the Economic Club of NY. In the past three months, job gains have averaged 218,000 per month.

Today, the agency revised that expectations-beating figure even higher, saying that 298,000 jobs had been added in October. The civilian labor force participation rate was 62.5 percent, and it also changed little in November. “For the first time in memory, there were no meaningful downsides buried deep in the employment summary”.