US job market in October
US job market in October
By Ben Casselman @bencasselman
"Big-picture: We're still down about 4.2 million jobs relative to our prepandemic level."
"And the gap is even larger if you remember that we were adding jobs steadily before the pandemic -- so we're even further behind our prepandemic trendline."
"Zooming in on 2021, job growth picked up in October, and revisions made the Aug/Sep slowdown look milder. But we still aren't adding jobs at anywhere close to our early-summer pace. Recall that last spring, many economists were predicting several months of million-plus growth."
"The unemployment rate fell to 4.6%. The drop was entirely for "good" reasons, in that it was driven by more people getting jobs and fewer people being unemployed."
"That said, we didn't exactly see a rush back to the labor force in October. The labor force grew by just 104k. Labor force participation rate was flat."
Big-picture: We're still down about 4.2 million jobs relative to our prepandemic level. pic.twitter.com/sPCqYInAj2
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) November 5, 2021
