Unemployment in the US unexpectedly decreased in November – Kommersant

In November, the US unemployment rate fell to 3.7%. This came as a surprise to experts, since it was predicted that in November the unemployment rate would not change and would remain the same as in October—3.9%. And the number of new jobs created last month was quite significant – 199 thousand. Such data are provided in the monthly report Federal Bureau of Statistics, US Department of Labor.

Data on the number of new jobs also turned out to be higher than the forecasts of analysts, who expected about 180 thousand. In October, significantly fewer new jobs were created – 150 thousand. At the same time, the monthly average for the last five months is about 213 thousand jobs. The largest number of new jobs were created in healthcare – 77 thousand, which is significantly higher than the monthly average for the last 12 months, which is 54 thousand. In the public sector, 49 thousand new jobs were added, which is lower than the monthly average – 55 thousand. The number of jobs increased significantly also in the leisure and hotel sectors – by 40 thousand. But in the retail sector, on the contrary, there was a significant drop – by 38 thousand jobs.

The labor force participation rate, which is the share of a country’s working-age population actively participating in the labor market, increased by 0.1% to 62.8%. Commenting on the results, Navy Federal Credit Union economist Robert Frick said CNBC: “We wanted a strong but slowing labor market, and that’s what we saw in the November data.” The expert points to “healthy job growth, lower unemployment and decent wage growth.” “All of this indicates that next year the labor market will reach a natural equilibrium of about 150,000 new jobs per month, which is enough to continue expansion, but not too much for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates,” he noted.

Alena Miklashevskaya