« Gauging productivity | Main | Forecasting the Fed is only as easy as forecasting inflation »
December 08, 2006
Economy adds 132,000 jobs in November
From the Wall Street Journal:
WASHINGTON -- U.S. payroll growth accelerated during November, suggesting the economy isn't slowing too much, and worker wages grew slightly less than expected.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 132,000 jobs, after rising by a revised 79,000 in October, the Labor Department said Friday. The jobless rate inched up as expected to 4.5% from 4.4%.
Wall Street expected payrolls to grow by only 110,000 jobs last month. Another surprise came with average hourly earnings, up by just 0.2% to $16.94 instead of the expected 0.3% increase.
Blog roundup:
Angry Bear reminds us that the employment to population ratio hasn't changed much. Big Picture is waiting for the inevitable revisions. Calculated Risk thinks that construction job losses will start spilling over into the retail sector soon. General Glut compares this November to the last couple of Novembers and is unimpressed. Global Trader's Diary points out that the dollar isn't impressed either. Greg Mankiw touts wage growth. James Hamilton calls it "solid."
All in all, it's a little better than I expected, but it doesn't change much in the way of my thoughts on the likely path of Fed policy. Employment is still not a good early warning indicator. (On that note, macroblog has good news to report on some leading employment indicators.) In the last cycle, the peak employment was in February 2001 when the Fed had already begun to cut rates. Still, the figure is encouraging. The broader economy continues to steam ahead even as housing and autos falter. It has kept up longer than some people thought it would, and I don't think it has run out of legs quite yet. Time will tell, and people will be watching the December and January numbers very closely.
Posted by William Polley at December 8, 2006 03:48 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.williampolley.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/658
Comments
Greg did tout wage growth - or should we say noise in the time series data as he left off the part about how real wages fell. Over the past three years, the average real wage growth has been approximately zero.
Posted by: pgl at December 9, 2006 08:45 AM