US Economy Adds 211000 Jobs in November; Unemployment at 5 Percent

“The bottom line: The November report ensures that the Fed will move at the December meeting,”American Action Forum, a center-right Washington-based think tank said in a statement on the U-6 number”.

The US economy added 211,000 jobs in November, slightly better than expectations, with the unemployment rate remaining steady at 5%, the US Department of Labor announced on Friday. But factories shed 1,000 jobs. Year-over-year hourly pay rose 2.3 percent after a 2.5 percent gain a month earlier.

Stubbornly weak wage growth has proven a thorn in the Fed’s size as it waits for inflation to rise toward its 2% target.

“Prior to this data, the markets had been pricing in a high 70 per cent likelihood of a rise which will no doubt increase more now”.

The report on Friday echoes other positive data of recent on job openings, weekly claims for benefits of unemployment and private payroll surveys.

The civilian labor force participation rate was at 62.5 percent and changed little in November, the Labor Department said. The jobless rate is in a range many Fed officials see as consistent with full employment and has dropped seven-tenths of a percentage point this year. “Since reaching an employment peak in December 2014, the industry has lost 124,000 jobs”, according to the BLS report.

Job creation has been averaging around 200,000 a month this year, a figure Ms. Yellen said was “quite a bit” above the number needed to continue absorbing slack in the labour market. New jobs were concentrated in construction, professional and technical services, and health care.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen told Congress Thursday that she is seeing a lot of economic data showing the recovering economy no longer needs such help.

“Raising rates this year will… serve to reduce monetary policy uncertainty and to keep the economy on track for sustained growth with price stability”, added Harker, who does not gain a vote on the central bank’s policy-setting committee until 2017 under a Fed rotation. In theory, wages should be moving higher based on simple supply and demand.

Even with strong hiring over the past year, wage growth has remained perhaps the job market’s biggest weakness since the recession ended.

That hasn’t been the case throughout much of 2015, however. “There were fewer workers laboring part-time for economic reasons and small declines in discouraged and long-term unemployed workers”.