US economy adds 261K jobs, unemployment continues to drop to 17-year low
The U.S. economy added 261,000 jobs in October, meeting expectations that the country had rebounded from the impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and the jobless rate ticked down to 4.1 percent — the lowest level since 2000.
Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, said that “It was a bounce back after the weak jobs figures from the hurricanes — the same pattern we saw with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.”
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The leisure and hospitality industry was the big employment-gain leader for the month (106K), followed by professional and business services industry, which added 50,000 jobs.
“Employment in food services and drinking places increased sharply, mostly offsetting a decline in September that largely reflected the impact of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. CNBC published a great graph illustrating the growth by sector, click HERE.
After the incredible crash at the beginning of the Obama administration, the unemployment figure jumped to 10.1 in 2010 and has dropped steadily since.
In terms of wages, federal economists say that the average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls — which had risen by 12 cents in September — dropped by 1 cent to $26.53. That rate has risen by only 63 cents, or 2.4 percent, over the past 12 months.
Year-over-year wage growth, though, sank to 2.4 percent, according to Friday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Economists have been watching the wage numbers closely,” NPR’s Chris Arnold reports for our Newscast unit, “and hoping to see Americans getting more money in their pockets. But this report doesn’t show any relief from pretty anemic wage growth.”
The government breaks down the unemployment demographics:
“Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult women (3.6 percent) and Whites (3.5 percent) declined in October. The jobless rates for adult men (3.8 percent), teenagers (13.7 percent), Blacks (7.5 percent), Asians (3.1 percent), and Hispanics (4.8 percent) showed little change.”
The Labor Department unit also says that there were 524,000 discouraged workers in October, reflecting no meaningful change from one year earlier.
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