Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 263,000 in November, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
The November Jobs Report released Friday showed notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, health care, and government. Employment declined in retail trade and in transportation and warehousing.
White House National Economic Council Director Bharat Ramamurti explains more.
“We see pretty broad-based growth. As you noted, up 263,000 jobs in November, above expectations going into that month. If you look at from when the President took office in January 2021, we’ve added 10.5 million new jobs, that’s every single job that were lost during the pandemic, plus another million more. So a lot of strength in the economy, a lot of jobs added in particular in leisure and hospitality, and among state and local employees, so those are two pockets of better than expected job growth.”
Both the labor force participation rate, at 62.1 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 59.9 percent, were little changed in November and have shown little net change since early this year. Ramamurti says the numbers are a little short for labor force participation, the number of folks working or actively looking for work.
“I think there’s a variety of explanations for that. The pandemic continues to play a role. There’s a lot of folks who are out of the workforce because they are dealing with some of the lingering symptoms of COVID or dealing with somebody in their family who has COVID. And of course, very sadly, a lot of people lost their lives. You added to the fact that overall, the American workforce is aging. More and more people are aging out of the workforce than aging into the workforce, That’s a big part of the story. A big part of the story as well is what’s called excess retirement, folks who are at or near retirement age deciding to get out of the workforce, rather than staying in for a couple more years.”
That’s White House National Economic Council Director Bharat Ramamurti.
