Jobless rate slips to 4.9 percent in US

The labour-market figures offer a last big hint at the direction of the economy before Americans flock to the polls November 8.

The comparatively good jobs report did little to calm investor worries Friday, with the S&P 500 closing down for the ninth straight day in a row and all major U.S. equities markets finishing lower.

The report showed stronger wage growth than has been seen in some time: wages rose 0.4 percent in October, coming to 2.8 percent growth over the a year ago. Yet the latest report could signal that wage gains are picking up, putting more pressure on the Fed to act next month.

Commenting on the report, Jed Kolko, chief economist with job site Indeed said, “The October jobs report was as good as an optimist dared hoped for”.

Wage growth – one of the last metrics to move in the right direction post-recession – continued to show signs of accelerating. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not now looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.

Revisions added a total of 44,000 jobs to earlier payroll estimates for August and September. The tight race between Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump has rattled financial markets.

“I believe in growth from the middle out and bottom up. He wants an economy that works for him”. Nobody believes the numbers anyway.

Appearing in New Hampshire, Trump disputed the accuracy of the results and called them “an absolute disaster”. That month alone, almost three-quarters of a million jobs disappeared from the US economy.

There may be more pay growth for workers ahead, as well. The NASDAQ Composite Index and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index had risen roughly half a percentage point by Friday mid-day, after falling for eight consecutive days. “The labor force participation rate remains well below historic levels, and the real unemployment rate is closer to 10 percent when factoring in people who have given up looking for work within the a year ago and those who are underemployed and working part-time jobs”.

The Fed said Wednesday in a statement that it “judges that the case for an increase in the federal-funds rate has continued to strengthen but decided, for now, to wait for some further evidence of continued progress toward its objectives”.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for August was revised up from +167,000 to +176,000, and the change for September was revised up from +156,000 to +191,000.

“U.S. jobless claims remain supportive of labor market improvement”, said Michael Gapen, chief economist at Barclays in NY. The U.S. economy has now created jobs for 73 straight months, the longest streak on record.

The average work week for all workers held at 34.4 hours in October.

What’s more, hourly wages have climbed 2.8% over the past year, the fastest 12-month increase since June 2009 just as the Great Recession was ending.

Information for this article was contributed by Paul Wiseman, Martin Crutsinger, of The Associated Press and by Shobhana Chandra of Bloomberg News.

Still, wage growth remains moderate and economists blame this on a low labor force participation rate. So far, the economy has added an average of 181,000 jobs per month in 2016.

But higher wages and relatively low unemployment tell only part of the story. While gross domestic product increased at a 2.9% annualized rate for the strongest pace in two years, inventory rebuilding and a soybean-related jump in exports largely fueled the rebound. The Bureau explained that many workers may be off of work during extreme weather, lowering thier number of hours, while others who are working in cleanup and fix industries may see a jump in the number of hours worked. Government and construction also bulked up their payrolls.

They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Economists had expected private sector employment to rise by about 170,000 jobs. Temporary-help jobs, a harbinger for future hiring, increased 6,400.