After a futile past week, with the Presidential debate, faulty tax returns and Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment making headlines, the Trump administration finally has some statistics speeching in their favour.
The US economy witnessed 661,000 jobs added back in September as the unemployment rate dipped from 8.2% to 7.9%. The recovery in the labour market reported consistency as reported by the Labour Department on Friday.
A metrics release by Bloomberg highlighted the change in non-farm payrolls, average hourly earnings and labour force participation.
- Change in non-farm payrolls: +661,000 vs. +859,000 expected.
- Unemployment rate: 7.9% vs. 8.2% expected.
- Average hourly earnings, month over month: 0.1% vs. 0.2% expected.
- Average hourly earnings, year over year: 4.7% vs. 4.8% expected.
- Labor force participation rate: 61.4% vs. 62.0% expected
This report comes a day after Wall Street Journal notified that the application for unemployment benefits in the country slightly in the last week but remained between 800,000 and 900,000.
The US had seen its worst unemployment rate in April when the number touched 14.7%. Since adding 1.4 million jobs in August, the country has chosen a steeper path for improvement.
However, the recovery has been disproportionate. The September statistics show that the unemployment rate for white people was 7%, for black people it was 12.1% and for Latinos it was 10.3%. The teenage unemployment rate was 15.9%.
Even after flushing the market with jobs, the US economy stands with a problem sitting on its shoulder. Majority of United States’ working population has witnessed permanent layoffs. Only fewer than half of the unemployed workers reported a temporary layoff or furlough in August, representing a major slide from the near-80% in the category in April. The number of permanent job losers in August rose by 534,000 to 3.4 million, with this measure having increased by 2.1 million since February.
