US payrolls rise solidly, jobless rate at nine-year low

USA employers added a solid 178,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate fell to a nine-year low of 4.6 percent, though mainly because many people stopped looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed.

Hiring is solid and the unemployment rate low.

Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose 2.5% in November compared with a year earlier.

Men have actually been the main contributors to the declining labor force population, with a drop of almost five percentage points, or 6.4 percent, since the Great Recession, compared to women’s decrease of less than three percentage points, or just over 4.5 percent. Jobs in finance, insurance, real estate and leasing jumped by 54,000 over the past year, StatsCan reports.

The unemployment rate is now back to where it was in August 2007 – four months before the Great Recession began. But in recent months, a return of discouraged workers to the labor force kept unemployment elevated and appeared to temper wage pressures, giving policymakers more leeway to leave rates lower a bit longer without stoking inflation.

While the overall unemployment rate has been steadily improving, it’s been considerably slower for people of color, particularly for African Americans. The labor force in the mostly French-speaking province declined by 20,300, the largest drop since December 2014. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. At some point, that trend will have to change and Calgary could see a significant number of people leaving the city to look for work elsewhere, he said. And there are people of all colors waiting in the wings outside the labor force as well, a cohort labeled “missing workers” by the Economic Policy Institute, which says they would be employed in a healthier economy.

Employment in Ontario edged up in November, following a notable increase the previous month.

That promise could be hard to achieve, given the continuing trend toward automation and decades-long shift of the economy away from manufacturing and toward the service sector, said Jed Kolko, chief economist at job search site Indeed. Employment in leisure and hospitality rose by 29,000.

Over the 12 months leading up to November, the labour market added 220,100 employee jobs and shed 22,100 self-employed positions.

The company hopes to add 3,000 to its 8,000-person staff by June, when moving season heats up. The headline job growth of 10.7k jobs overstates the case.

Retailers reduced payrolls by 8,300.

At the local level, Edmonton’s jobless rate was relatively unchanged, edging down 0.1 per cent from the month prior to 6.8 per cent – equal to the national rate. Average hourly earnings fell three cents, or 0.1 percent, after shooting up 0.4 percent in October. September’s nonfarm payrolls were revised up to a gain of 208,000 and October’s tally down to 142,000, a net decrease of 2,000. October was initially reported as a 161,000 increase. The image makes a distinction – red columns point to monthly job totals under the Bush administration, while blue columns point to job totals under the Obama administration.