How Weak Was Friday’s Jobs Report?
Conn Carroll /
Upside surprise: Employers add 151,000 jobs in October , the USA Today reported about the Bureau of Labor Statistics Friday. And it is true: the establishment survey of U.S. businesses did report that 151,000 jobs were created last month. But as The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk and Rea Hederman note there was also some troubling news in Friday’s report:
Taken in isolation, the October household survey paints a worrying picture of the U.S. labor market. It reports that employment fell by a net 330,000 jobs and that the number of unemployed workers grew by 76,000 in October. The median length of time workers stay unemployed rose from 20.4 weeks to 21.2 weeks.
The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.6 percent only because a net 462,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force and thus do not count as unemployed. The labor force participation rate fell by 0.2 points to 64.5 percent. That is the lowest rate since November 1984, a time in which fewer women participated in the labor force. Over one in four adult men (26.2 percent) are neither working nor looking for workâthe highest rate of labor force non-participation recorded in the entire postwar era.