USA adds 271000 jobs in October

US employers added 271,000 jobs in October, the largest gain this year and a sign of economic growth that may position the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month. In addition to this increase, revised job report numbers for the two previous months show 12,000 more jobs were created.

With October’s jobs report, 13.7 million Latinos are not active in the labor force, which is an increase of at least 700,000 from October 2014.

US stocks closed mixed after wavering in a tight range Friday, as a much-better-than-expected jobs report for October bolstered the case for a December rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen said this week that a December rate hike – which would be the first in almost a decade – is a “live possibility”, assuming the economy progresses as the Fed expects.

By comparison, the alternative measure of underemployment peaked at 18% in January, 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the Financial Crisis. Big gains occurred in construction, health care and retail.

Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 9 cents to 25.20 US dollars, following little change in September. The central bank started cutting rates in 2007 and kept pushing them down until the federal funds rate was near zero in December 2008.

On Friday morning, the BLS announced the Latino unemployment rate stood at 6.3 percent, a minor decline from September’s 6.4 percent.

The latest employment report offers concrete evidence the US remains on a solid growth path despite turmoil in the global economy and tougher times for a few domestic industries such as manufacturing and energy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened up 0.21% led by a gain of 3.5% from JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM).

PIPE LEAK: TransCanada fell $2.06, or 6 percent, to $32.30 after The Associated Press and other news outlets reported that the White House, after years of scrutiny, planned to reject the company’s proposed 1,200-mile Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Even education, which has been a reliable growth engine for jobs, and saw increased hiring overall, has not been immune to cuts. “We are doing about as good as we could ever do”, Bullard said in St. Louis.

“Underneath the euphoria over a good topline employment number is this fact: Manufacturing hasn’t gained a single net job since January”, Scott Paul, president of Alliance for American Manufacturing, a trade group, said in a statement.

The labor market as a whole, however, is still the healthiest it’s been in years.

Nationally, there were 387,000 jobs in the motion picture and sound recording sector in October, up from 380,100 in September and up 4.5 percent from 370,400 a year ago. Average weekly hours was unchanged at 34.5, although it edged down by 0.1 percentage points for production workers.

ASIA’S DAY: Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 added 0.8 percent to 19,265.60 while South Korea’s Kospi inched fell 0.4 percent to 2,041.07.