Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 211,000 in November, lower than last month’s upwardly revised total of 298,000 jobs. The national unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.0 percent.
According to Joel Naroff of Naroff Economics, “The increase came despite further cut backs in energy-related firms, weakness in clothing stores, a weird crash in the motion picture industry and a very strange reduction in the vehicle sector, which continues to set new sales records. And, we actually saw a decline in temporary help services companies! In other words, this report was probably even stronger than the headline number implies.”
The majority of gains occurred in construction, which added 46,000 jobs, up from a gain of 34,000 in October. Leisure and hospitality followed with 39,000 jobs, 9,000 less than last month’s gain. Health care and social assistance added 32,200 jobs, down from 62,700 in the previous month. Over the past year, health care employment has increased by 470,000.
Goods producing industries added 34,000 jobs as a whole, largely due to healthy gains in construction. Most other goods producing industries shed jobs, however, with mining and logging employment falling by 11,000, motor vehicles and parts employment down 3,400, and manufacturing employment falling by 1,000.
The civilian labor force participation rate was little changed at 62.5% in November. The number of long-term unemployed, those jobless for 27 weeks or more, was also unchanged at 2.1 million.
The number of discouraged workers, those who gave up looking for work, was 594,000, little changed from a year ago.
Average hourly earnings rose by 4 cents to $25.25 in November. Year-over-year, hourly earnings grew 2.3 percent.
Read the BLS release.
