The United States gained a decent 64,000 jobs in November, but it lost 105,000 in October as federal workers departed after cutbacks by the Trump administration, the government said in delayed reports. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the highest level since 2021, per the AP. Both the October and November job creation numbers, released Tuesday by the Labor Department, came in late due to the 43-day federal government shutdown. US firms are mostly holding onto the employees they have, but they're reluctant to hire new ones as they struggle to assess how to use AI, how to adjust to President Trump's unpredictable policies—especially his tariffs—and how to deal with the lingering effects of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to rein in an inflation burst.
The uncertainty leaves job seekers struggling to find work or even land interviews. Fed policymakers are divided over whether the labor market needs more help from lower interest rates. Their deliberations are rendered more difficult because official reports on the economy's health are coming in late and incomplete in the wake of the shutdown. The Labor Department is expected to provide at least a little clarity when it releases November numbers on hiring and unemployment on Tuesday, 11 days late.
Labor Department revisions in September showed that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. That meant that employers added an average of just 71,000 new jobs a month over that period, not the 147,000 first reported. Since March, job creation has fallen farther, to an average 59,000 a month. During the 2021-2023 hiring boom that followed the end of COVID-19 lockdowns, by contrast, the economy was creating an average of 400,000 jobs a month. The unemployment rate, though still modest by historical standards, has risen since bottoming out at a 54-year low of 3.4% in April 2023.
Because of the government shutdown, the Labor Department didn't release its jobs reports for September, October, and November on time. It finally put out the September jobs report on Nov. 20, seven weeks late. It will publish some of the October data—including a count of the jobs created that month by businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies—along with the November report on Tuesday. It won't, however, release an unemployment rate for October, as it couldn't calculate the number during the shutdown. More here.
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