Job increases in October report no solace to jobless

The United States economy added 151,000 careers last month according to the Labor Department’s October jobs report. The job creation numbers were more than expected, but barely sufficient to keep up with United States of America population growth. The newest jobs were not sufficient to budge the unemployment rate, which floundered at 9.6 percent.

Jobs report and Oct numbers

The surprise came to economic forecasters with the Oct jobs report. A 60,000 net increase in jobs was expected. The Labor Department report had been a major improvement over September’s numbers, which showed a net decrease of 41,000 jobs. After hemorrhaging jobs for two straight years, the private sector has shown job growth for 10 months in a row. Since May, the October numbers were the best. 159,000 people were hired for jobs by U.S. companies. The 92,000 jobs in Oct economists were predicting were beat. It was actually 151,000 total since 8,000 jobs were cut in Oct by the government.

Industries that are hiring

Health care, retail, temp workers, mining and small businesses are where the Oct jobs report shows hiring is happening. There were many hired in health care. 24,000 workers were hired. 28,000 got jobs in retail. Food services hired 24,000. The temp work force hired a lot. 35,000 went there. A weaker dollar boosted mining to the tune of 8,000 jobs. The Labor Department doesn't hear from the small companies as easily as the rest. That means an upwards of 110,000 had been a change for August and Sept.

Need to get better than that

Despite the Oct job creation, the U.S. has a long way to go. Economic growth is still too weak to affect the 9.6 percent unemployment rate. There aren't enough jobs still. 15 million are still searching for them. Then there are the people that have part-time work but need full time jobs. The real rate is at about 17 percent of unemployed. The Brookings Institution explains that 12 years would be needed to close the gap in growing labor force and accessible jobs with a 208,000 jobs a month boost.

Citations

CNNMoney.com

money.cnn.com/2010/11/05/news/economy/october_jobs_report/?npt=NP1

Christian Science Monitor

csmonitor.com/Business/2010/1105/Jobs-growth-shows-some-zip-unemployment-rate-unmoved

New York Times

nytimes.com/2010/11/06/business/economy/06jobs.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&src=mv