Three Good Signs and Three Worries in the Jobs Report

The Labor Department announced on Friday morning that the economy created 203,000 jobs in November and that the unemployment rate fell to seven per cent, the lowest level since November, 2008. It was another pretty strong jobs report, but let’s not get carried away. Here are six takeaways, three positive and three cautionary.

1. One month of figures doesn’t necessarily mean much: there’s a lot statistical noise in the employment update. Still, we’ve now seen three months of solid employment growth, with payroll gains averaging more than a hundred and ninety thousand since September. Given that during this period the economy was subjected to a government shutdown and the uncertainty of a debt-ceiling crisis, the strength in hiring is doubly reassuring. The longer-term trend is also encouraging: since the recovery began, in 2009, the monthly payroll figure has averaged about a hundred and seventy-five thousand. So there does seem to have been a bit of a pickup recently.

...read more