Zeke Millier is the AP's White House reporter
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WASHINGTON (AP) — US employers added a sluggish 210,000 jobs in November as economy contends with inflation and shortages.
Here's an analysis of the payroll employment report the Associated Press distributed later on Friday. The AP used the 1.1 million figure from the report's household survey. The time stamp is 3:30 in the afternoon.
The unemployment rate plummeted from 4.6% to 4.2% as a substantial 1.1 million Americans said they found jobs last month.
US jobless rate sinks to 4.2% as many more people find jobs
America’s employers slowed the pace of their hiring in November, adding 210,000 jobs, the lowest monthly gain in nearly a year. Friday, Dec. 3 report from the Labor Department also showed that the nation’s unemployment rate tumbled from 4.6% to 4.2% evidence that many more people reported that they had a job.
By CHRISTOPER RUGABER The Associated Press 19 hrs ago | 3 min to read
America’s unemployment rate tumbled last month to its lowest point since the pandemic struck, even as employers appeared to slow their hiring — a mixed picture that pointed to a resilient economy that’s putting more people to work.
The government reported Friday that private businesses and other employers added just 210,000 jobs in November, the weakest monthly gain in nearly a year and less than half of October’s gain of 546,000.<
But other data from
the Labor Department’s report painted a much brighter picture. The unemployment rate plummeted from 4.6% to 4.2% as a substantial 1.1 million Americans said they found jobs last month.
The U.S. economy still remains under threat from a spike in inflation, shortages of labor and supplies and the potential impact of the omicron variant of the coronavirus. But for now, Americans are spending freely, and the economy is forecast to expand at a 7% annual rate in the final three months of the year, a sharp rebound from the 2.1% pace in the previous quarter, when the delta variant hobbled growth.
Employers in some industries, such as restaurants, bars, and hotels, sharply slowed their hiring in November. By contrast, job growth remained solid in areas like transportation and warehousing, which are benefiting from the growth of online commerce.
The sharp drop in the unemployment rate was particularly encouraging because it coincided with an influx of a half-million job-seekers into the labor force, most of whom quickly found work. Normally, many such people would take time to find jobs and would be counted as unemployed until they did. The influx of new job-seekers, if it continues, would help reduce the labor shortages that have bedeviled many employers since the economy began to recover from the pandemic.
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