US jobless rate falls to 9-year low of 4.6%
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US employers added a solid 178,000 jobs in November, reflecting the steady economy President-elect Donald Trump will inherit. And the unemployment rate hit a nine-year low of 4.6 percent, though mainly because many people stopped looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed.
Even so, yesterday’s report from the Labor Department reflected a resilient job market that is helping drive the US economy. The economy this year has added an average of 180,000 jobs a month‚ more than enough to lower the unemployment rate over time.
The pace of hiring is keeping the Federal Reserve on track to raise short-term interest rates at its next meeting in under two weeks.
“This jobs report paves the way for Fed rate hikes,” said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics. “It also tops off a recent run of continually positive economic data.”
Still, sluggish pay increases and a decline in the number of Americans either working or seeking work point to longer-term challenges for the economy under Trump.
Last month, average hourly pay slipped after a strong increase in October. Pay has grown only modestly over the past year.
Those same challenges bedeviled President Barack Obama and might have helped prompt millions of voters to choose Trump over Hillary Clinton in the election.
The number of unemployed fell last month by 387,000 to 7.4 million, lowering the jobless rate from 4.9 percent. But only about a third of that drop occurred because people found work. The rest reflected a decline in people looking for jobs. The government doesn’t count people as unemployed unless they’re actively looking for a job.
The drop in the number of people working or seeking work appeared to be concentrated among white men, a group that helped form the core of Trump’s support.
More positively, the number of part-time workers who would prefer full-time work dropped last month. That helped lower an alternative gauge of unemployment that also includes involuntary part-time workers and discouraged would-be workers, to 9.3 percent, the lowest since 2008. Still, that figure remains above pre-recession levels.
Fewer than 60 percent of adults have jobs — 3 percentage points lower than when the Great Recession began in late 2007.
In part, that trend reflects retirements by the nation’s many baby boomers. But it also means hiring hasn’t kept up with population growth. And seven years into the recovery, pay growth is still below healthy levels.
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