America Created 263,000 Jobs in NovemberJohn Carney 2 Dec 2022
The U.S. economy added 263,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.
Economists had expected the economy to add 200,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 3.7 percent. The range of forecasts by economists surveyed by Econoday was between a gain on payrolls of 150,000 to 275,000. On unemployment, the range of forecasts was 3.6 percent to 3.8 percent.
The Labor Department’s Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey showed that there were 10.3 million job openings at the end of October, around 1.7 vacancies for every unemployed person. Federal Reserve officials frequently cite the vacancy ratio as evidence that the labor market is so tight that it risks fueling inflation.
The demand for labor from employers has proven highly resilient, adding to payrolls and vacancies even as the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates up at the fastest pace in decades. The bottom of the Fed’s range for its benchmark rate has gone from zero at the start of the year to 3.75 percent today. The Fed is expected to announce a 50 basis point hike at its December meeting.
“In the labor market, demand for workers far exceeds the supply of available workers, and nominal wages have been growing at a pace well above what would be consistent with 2 percent inflation over time. Thus, another condition we are looking for is the restoration of balance between supply and demand in the labor market,” Fed chairman Jerome Powell said this week.
The supply of labor has been persistently below prepandemic levels, with a larger share of Americans preferring to remain outside the workforce. The Labor Department said on Friday that both the labor force participation rate, at 62.1 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 59.9 percent, were little changed in November and have shown little net change since early this year.
more
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/12/02/america-created-263000-jobs-in-november/