By Joyce Yu
Philadelphia, PA–The U.S. job market continued to rebound in October, adding 261,000 new positions, but falling short of economists’ expectations for an increase of 310,000 jobs.
The United States has added jobs for 85 straight months, the longest streak on record. Unemployment inched down in October to 4.1%, the lowest level since December 2000, also below the Fed’s median forecast for 2017.
Wage increased however only 2.4% in October compared with a year earlier, behind September’s number, which means that inflation will continue to undershoot its 2% target. The absence of better wage growth and inflation continue to weight down on the economy.
A broader measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment, dropped to 7.9 percent last month, the lowest level since December 2006, from 8.3 percent in September.
“This labor market is still really firing on all cylinders,” Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco, shared with the Reuters.
“There are obviously storm distortions in this report, but the decline in the unemployment rate reflects ongoing improvement in the labor market. November is going to clear a lot of this up,” said Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Plc in New York and a former Fed official.
October’s employment growth acceleration reinforced the Federal Reserve’s assessment on Wednesday that “the labor market has continued to strengthen,” and probably does little to change expectations the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates in December.
Over the longer term, “the participation rate has been generally moving sideways and I don’t think that story has changed,” Gapen said. “The Fed will take the decline in the participation rate with a grain of salt.”
On individual stocks, Apple’s newest smartphone iPhone X went on sale in stores around the world Friday. The company has high hopes that this phone will generate big sales. In its earnings forecast issued yesterday, Apple expected its sales for the upcoming holiday quarter would fall between $84 billion and $87 billion exceeding market’s expectations, and helping to boost Apple shares today.
