WASHINGTON: The US economy added 1,50,000 jobs in October, reflecting a labour market that has cooled over the past year, the Washington Post reported.
October payroll data, though, included the added temporary weight of the United Auto Workers strikes against three auto manufacturers. About 45,000 United Auto Workers members were on strike in October, with manufacturing jobs declining by 35,000, according to the Washington Post report.
October’s job data marks the second-lowest increase since 2020. The unemployment rate rose slightly to 3.9 per cent after months of hovering near historic lows after employers rapidly created millions of jobs to keep up with pent-up consumer demand, according to the Washington Post report.
Coming to wage growth in the US, it rose by 4.1 per cent over the previous 12 months to $34 an hour, but continued to beat inflation and boost workers’ purchasing power.
“This report shows a lot of weakening on the surface, but it was clearly clouded by a lot of strike activity that now seems to be resolved”, said Aaron Terrazas, chief economist at Glassdoor, as per the media report. “Once you squeeze past the one-off shocks in October, it’s actually a relatively strong report”.
The unemployment rate, which hit longtime lows and not seen since the late 1960s, has increased by half a percentage point since April with about 849,000 more workers reporting that they are unemployed. Still, the percentage of Americans who are unemployed has been below 4 per cent for nearly two years, a sign that the labour market remains much stronger. (ANI)