86th Month of Job Growth Signals Strength of Economy
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The Labor Department released its official hiring and unemployment figures for November on Friday morning, providing the latest snapshot of the American economy.
The Numbers
• 228,000 jobs were added last month. Wall Street economists had expected an increase of about 200,000, according to Bloomberg.
The Takeaway
The American job market is the strongest it’s been in a decade, and arguably the strongest since 2000. The United States has now added jobs for 86 consecutive months — a downward blip in September was later revised to show a small gain — and the unemployment rate is lower than it ever got during the last boom, which ended when the housing bubble burst. Even wage growth, long the weak spot in an otherwise strong recovery, is showing signs of picking up.
“It’s a really, really strong economy,” said Tom Gimbel, chief executive of LaSalle Network, a staffing firm in Chicago. “Companies really want to take advantage of the economy, so they want to hire and get while the getting’s good.”
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