Friday’s strong jobs report “all but guarantees” the Fed later this month will raise its benchmark short-term interest rate above zero for the first time since 2008, according to MarketWatch.
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Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, speaking the day before a key employment report, said the US economy needs to add fewer than 100,000 jobs a month to cover new entrants to the workforce, setting an implicit floor for the jobs growth policymakers want to see.
The Labor Department’s revised job growth for September and October was up by a combined 35,000.
The government says November brought some more hiring, with employers adding 211,000 jobs.
Today, the agency revised that expectations-beating figure even higher, saying that 298,000 jobs had been added in October.
In other data, the USA trade deficit widened unexpectedly in October as exports fell to a three-year low, suggesting that trade could again weigh on economic growth in the fourth quarter. The signal of economic health will likely spur the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its next meeting in less than two weeks.
Ryan Sweet, senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in Westchester, Pennsylvania, said, “The employment report will give the Fed confidence to begin raising rates in December”.
Average hourly earnings jumped to $25.25 and are now up 2.3 percent from this time previous year.
The labor force participation rate- the share of working- age people who are employed or looking for work – rose to 62.5 percent from 62.4 percent.
Over the a year ago, five New England states recorded statistically significant unemployment rate decreases, with declines ranging from 1.7% in Rhode Island to 0.5% in Vermont. Year over year, pay grew 2.3%, down from October’s six-year high of 2.5%.
“It was encouraging that job growth has become more broad-based”, said Ryan Sweet, director of real time economics at Moody’s Analytics. Interest rate futures maturing in the second half of next year are rising slightly, showing traders are wagering the Fed will manage no more than two further hikes before the end of next year.
“We’re growing just as quickly as we can find excellent people who are a good fit for our organization, and we’d be hiring faster if we could find those people faster”, Knox said.
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Mining purged 11,000 jobs, with oil and gas extraction losing 2,400 positions. It may have been her strongest comment yet pointing toward a rate increase at the Fed’s December 15 and 16 meeting. So, absent a major disappointment with Friday’s jobs number or major financial market volatility, we’re on the verge of the first rate hike since 2006.
