Job growth accelerated in October, but the unemployment rate held steady, the government said Friday, the latest data pointing to an economy that is finally strengthening as the year nears its end. Employers added 151,000 jobs last month – more than double what analysts expected – the Labor Department said. That compares with a revised 41,000 jobs lost during September. Analysts had forecast a gain of 60,000 positions, making the report the most promising reading on the economy in a month. The unemployment rate remained 9.6 percent…
October was the first month since last spring to show job creation levels high enough to make, over time, a dent in the nation’s astronomical unemployment. Employers need to create about 125,000 new jobs a month to keep up with an ever-growing population. There has been a string of somewhat better than expected economic reports in recent weeks, including surveys of activity in the manufacturing and service sectors released this week. The economy has been locked in a pattern of steady expansion since the summer of 2009, but since the spring that expansion had slowed too much to bring down unemployment. Overall economic growth was 2 percent in the July-through-September quarter, a bit below the long-term U.S. economic trend.
But the most recent readings on the economy, including Friday’s October jobs report, offer some hope that growth may finally accelerate as 2011 begins. The new reading on the nation’s job market comes two days after the Federal Reserve launched a new effort to pump $600 billion into the economy, an action specifically aimed at trying to break the nation out of its high-unemployment rut…
So, we have a “strong” jobs report — with total employment still 7 1/2 million less than it was three years ago, we had job gains slightly higher than the number needed to keep up with population growth. At this rate we’ll return to full employment around 2030 or so.
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