The unemployment rate remained at 5 percent according to the official jobs report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Last month’s biggest job gains were in construction (46,000), food services and drinking places (32,000) and retail (31,000).
There’s even less doubt now that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this month.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen holds a news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meeting in Washington September 17, 2015.
The report is the most significant the Fed will assess before deciding whether to lift its benchmark rate at a pivotal meeting December 15-16.
After hitting a 38-year low in September and October, the labor-force participation rate – which measures the percentage of those who either had a job or searched for one in the past month – ticked up a tenth of a percentage point in November to 62.5 percent from 62.4 percent last month, according to the November jobs report.
Stocks surged today, fueled by a November jobs report that showed a gain of 211,000 positions. Within the industry, employment in motion pictures and sound recording decreased by 13,000 in November but has shown little net change over the year. The Fed has kept its key short-term rate at a record low near zero for seven years.
With the November report, the average monthly increase in jobs over the past 12 months is 237,000, and the number of officially unemployed people has fallen by 1.1 million.
A Reuters survey of economists has predicted nonfarm payrolls increasing 200,000, in addition to October’s 271,000 jobs creation.
Mining employment has already declined by 109,000 since reaching a peak in December 2014. Traders also see about even odds of a second rate hike by March.
The jobless rate stayed at 5%.
In his first public comments on policy since taking the job in July, Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said he expects “steady and modest” growth as the economy is “approaching normalcy”. Global money is flowing back into the dollar amid expectations of a USA rate hike, which could strengthen the greenback further.
Yet the continued sluggishness of wage gains, and the high numbers of part-time workers remain signs of persistent slack in the jobs market.
For the Fed, conditions seem almost ideal for a period of small and only gradual rate increases in coming months: Job growth has been consistently solid, and wages have begun to rise but not so much as to cause concern about future high inflation. Overall, our economy has created 8.1m jobs over the past thirty-six months, the fastest pace since 2000.
Yet solid consumer spending and the housing recovery have underpinned payroll gains, more than offsetting industrial output that’s been curtailed by a strong dollar that has hobbled exports and bolstered imports. Average hourly earnings rose 2.3% in November compared to a year ago.
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“There’s nothing in the details that suggests anything other than a healthy and rapidly growing labor market”, said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.
