That’s up just slightly from the 10.4 percent rate reported the month prior.
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It’s the biggest one-month jobs gain in all of 2015, according to Bloomberg News, which adds that the strong result is one of the positive signs the Fed’s economists “are looking for as they consider a year-end boost in borrowing costs”. Still, last month was better than August and September when factories cut 28,000 jobs. Fed chief Janet Yellen and other top officials said this week that the economy is generally healthy and a move at next month’s meeting is a “live possibility”.
Friday’s report contained a few revisions: September’s job growth was revised down to 137,000, from 142,000; August’s numbers were revised up to 153,000, from 136,000. That is 2.5 percent higher than 12 months ago, the sharpest year-over-year gain since July 2009.
The number of people stuck in part-time jobs who would prefer to work full time has plunged 18 percent in the past year. Economists have been expecting a faster increase in pay amid a deep drop in unemployment and the creation of millions of new jobs over the past several years.
USA stocks ended little changed on Friday, with a rise in financials countered by a slide in utilities and other sectors, as Wall Street took the strong U.S.jobs report as evidence the Federal Reserve will soon raise interest rates. Meanwhile, year-over-year wage growth hit its highest mark since mid-2009. “The report is pretty good across the board”.
Stocks had a mixed reaction to the surprisingly strong October jobs report as investors adjusted to the prospect of higher interest rates as early as next month.
“The October surge in employment, coupled with measurable wage gains, will give the Fed the green light needed for liftoff in December”, Diane Swonk, chief economist with Mesirow Financial, wrote in her assessment.
Any job gain above roughly 150,000 was expected to keep Fed policymakers on track to raise rates from record lows at their December 15-16 meeting, though the Fed will have one more jobs report to digest before then.
Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that manufacturing wages are still rising at a poor 2.0 percent pace, and that the data shows that workers still do not feel comfortable with opportunities in the market: The number voluntarily leaving their jobs remains very low.
US Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said in a statement that the figures showed the nation was continuing to bounce back from the worst economic crisis in generations.
The rebound in hiring in October was driven nearly entirely by companies that offer services such as software design, banking, health care, shopping and eating out.
The Federal Reserve has wrestled with when to lift its benchmark lending rate for the first time since 2006.
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The five-year Treasury yield advanced more than a measure of the bond market’s expectation for the average rate of inflation during the next five years. That sector added 78,000 positions, the most in almost a year. Employment in mining continued to trend down, losing 5,000 jobs in October and 109,000 jobs since reaching a recent employment peak in December 2014.
