October Jobs Report hits 17 Year Low Again!
By Harriet Torry - Wall Street Journal- November 3, 2017
The U.S. jobless rate fell to a 17-year low in October and employers hired at a strong pace, showing the labor market bounced back from recent hurricanes. Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 261,000 in October, the Labor Department said Friday. That was a pickup from the prior month, but undershot economists’ expectations for 315,000 new jobs. Meantime, the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, its lowest level since December 2000. The jobless rate, which changed little over the course of 2016, has dropped from 4.8% to 4.1% since the start of this year, a sign the labor market is heating up.
When combined with August and September’s job growth, estimates of which were revised up, the October report shows the economy added jobs over the last three months at a pace of 162,000 a month.
And a broad measure of unemployment that includes Americans stuck in part-time jobs or too discouraged to look for work fell to 7.9%, matching its lowest level since 2006.
Friday’s payrolls data suggest the labor market remains on a solid trajectory, despite September’s blip. It follows other positive signals on the economy’s trajectory. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced in the U.S., expanded at a 3% annual rate in the third quarter, the Commerce Department said late last month. That capped the economy’s best six-month stretch of growth in three years, despite the two hurricanes, as soaring stock prices and rising business and consumer confidence boosted economic growth.