The US economy has resumed creating jobs at a robust pace – with businesses again finding Americans to hire even in a climate where scarcity has spread to the labor market. The data for October, after the slowdowns in the previous two months, showed 531,000 new payslips, more than the expected 450,000. While the unemployment rate slipped by 0.2 points to 4.6 percent. The data for September and August were actually revised significantly upwards, respectively, to 312,000 and 483,000 seats respectively from the 194,000 and 366,000 initially calculated.
Impasse overcome?
Salary increases decided by numerous companies could have contributed to breaking the impasse to respond to the expected strong demand for the holiday period and the end of the year, crucial in sectors such as department stores and in general the retail sector and such as catering and hospitality. . Also at stake is the recession of fears related to the pandemic and the exhaustion, by September, of many extraordinary anti-crisis aid for families. Hourly wages increased 4.9% from last year, in line with forecasts. However, the labor force participation rate, which includes those who work or actively seek employment, remained unchanged at 61.6%, still 1.7 points lower than in February 2020 and a sign of a non-normalized employment situation.
Subsidies in decline
Other signs had shown a recovery: applications for unemployment benefits have progressively decreased, with the last week recording a decline of 14,000 units to 269,000. While they are still around 50,000 above the 2019 per-pandemic average, that’s a fraction of the 800,000 applications still reported at the start of this year.
The resumption of work behind the withdrawal of the Fed
The latest data confirm the Federal Reserve’s orientation to initiate the withdrawal of growth stimuli: in its latest summit, judging the economy starting with the labor market sufficiently healed while inflation advances, it launched the so-called ” tapering ”, the reduction in asset purchases so far from 120 billion dollars a month which could then pave the way, next year, to squeeze interest rates from the current levels close to zero. The Central Bank has started the return maneuver by announcing a cut in purchases at the rate of 15 billion per month which should cancel them completely by June.
Manufacturing “engine” of employment
It was the private sector that pulled the sprint of work, with a total of 604,000 new jobs, first of all in the hospitality and leisure sector (164,000) and in professional and business services (100.00). Manufacturing was another particularly welcome strength, given the recent difficulties in the global supply chain that have besieged it: it added 60,000 payslips, with 28,000 new jobs in particular in automotive and components. Transportation earned an additional 54,000 paychecks. The public service sector, on the other hand, lost 73,000 places, with decreases first of all in the school sector and in local administrations.