It’s been a long time since we’ve had encouraging news on the jobs front. But boy did we get it this morning. The details:
* Employment fell by a paltry 11,000 in the month of November. That was much better than the expectation for a drop of 125,000. October’s -190k reading was also revised up to only -111k, while September’s -219k reading was bumped up to -139k.
* The unemployment rate actually FELL to 10% from 10.2%. That was better than the 10.2% forecast. The household employment survey, which is different from the business survey that gives you the headline jobs figure, actually showed a net GAIN of 227,000 jobs. We haven’t seen a positive reading since April 2009 (+120,000) and a reading this strong since April 2008 (+234,000).
* Average hourly earnings were the weak link in the chain. They gained just 0.1%. That was down from 0.3% a month earlier and below forecasts for a reading of 0.2%. However, average weekly hours picked up to 33.2 from 33. That’s the best reading we’ve seen since February.
* By industry, we saw a decent pop in service jobs (+58,000). The temporary help category has now shown three straight gains, including a sizable boost of 86,000 jobs. Education and health care has produced “Steady Eddie” gains (+40,000 in November). The weakness was in categories like construction (-27,000), manufacturing (-41,000), and retail trade (-15,000).
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Are you kidding me? More garbage reporting of numbers. No one on any blog I’m reading is buying the numbers, and no one thinks it is good news. Conveniently, the numbers started to go down with Obama holding his jobs summit (coincidentally!) Also, it is the holiday season, so a few people got crappy jobs at Target making $7.25 an hour without benefits and will be laid off after the holidays. Give me a break.