US employers add 178K jobs as unemployment sinks to 4.6 pct

Even as it has taken the entire eight years of the Obama administration for the official unemployment rate to fall to pre-recession levels, and there has been a negligible growth in wages, Wall Street has been booming.

One of those figures is called the U-6 rate, which has a broader definition of unemployment than the U-3 does.

The US unemployment rate in November fell to its lowest level since August 2007 as the economy continued to pump out new jobs, all but guaranteeing an interest rate hike this month.

“Today’s November jobs report can be summed up as: not bad, but not great”, said Lawrence Yun, National Association of Realtors chief economist.

Last month’s drop lowered the year-on-year gain in wages to 2.5 per cent in November from October’s 2.8 per cent increase, which was the largest rise in almost 7-1/2 years.

Yet monthly wage figures are volatile and the Fed is likely “to downplay the significance of one weak reading”, says economist Jim O’Sullivan of High Frequency Economics.

The data release comes ahead of the Federal Reserve’s December 13-14 meeting, where the central bank is expected to announce its first interest rate increase in a year.

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Surprisingly, retailers cut more than 8,000 positions on a seasonally adjusted basis for the second straight month in a sign that consumers continue to shift their holiday shopping online.

The labour participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job, fell 0.1 percentage point to 62.7 per cent last month, not too far from multi-decade lows, in part reflecting demographic changes.

Lewis said that a low unemployment rate may be a challenge for businesses in Washington County because of the need to find workers to match the higher demand for goods and services.

Trump has promised to spend heavily to rebuild America’s infrastructure.

Beyond job growth, attention will be paid to wages, which have risen quite slowly through the economic recovery.

The general reaction to this jobs report seems to be that it shows “decent, steady growth”.

The report paves the way for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates at its next meeting this month, said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics. President-elect Trump vowed to turn the economy around, a promise that appealed to many Americans who had dropped out of the workforce. That measure looks less worrisome: Earnings are up 2.5 percent from a year ago (2.4 percent for non-managers). The remaining 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in November had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. Manufacturers have shed 54,000 jobs and miners cut 87,300 in the a year ago.

“Our employment or unemployment rates are directly impacted by what’s happening in the economy at large”, said Lewis.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues are eager to raise rates in order to prevent inflation from taking off, and they believe the economy is strong enough to absorb a rate hike without the job market losing its momentum.

Other industries were largely unchanged for the month, including manufacturing, mining, retail trade, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, government, information, financial activities, and leisure and hospitality.