The Patriot Post® · November Jobs Numbers Are Mixed

The report on November jobs numbers is out — the U.S. added 178,000 jobs and the headline unemployment rate fell from 4.9% down to 4.6%. The more comprehensive U-6 rate also showed slight improvement, dropping from 9.5% down to 9.3% — the lowest level since early 2008. There are some concerning numbers, too. The annualized pace of average hourly earnings gains dropped 2.5%. While the number of part-time workers who would rather have a full-time positions dropped by 220,000 to 5.6 million, that’s still well over the pre-recession number of 4.5 million. And the number of workers not in the labor force at all jumped by 446,000 to a record total of 95.06 million. That’s why unemployment is down, too — because so many people aren’t even being counted any longer. Remember, too, that 178,000 jobs is all we could muster during the ramp-up for the holiday season.

“It’s a little mixed. Job growth is slowing,” said chief economic strategist at LPL Financial. “That’s about what you would have expected at this point in the business cycle.” It’s probably going to take some time before the election results really jumpstart the economy.