The federal agency that tracks many metrics in order to provide markers of economic activity released two new numbers for October yesterday morning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that nonfarm employment increased by 261,000 and the national unemployment rate also increased to 3.7 percent.
“Monthly job growth has averaged 407,000 thus far in 2022, compared with 562,000 per month in 2021,” reads the release. “In October, notable job gains occurred in health care, professional and technical services, and manufacturing.”
Employment in health care increased by 53,000 across the country with 43,000 new professional and technical services and 32,000 new manufacturing jobs.
The unemployment figure is 0.2 percent above September to a total of 6.1 million people. This figure has fluctuated in the same basic range since March.
“The labor force participation rate, at 62.2 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 60.0 percent, were about unchanged in October and have shown little net change since early this year,” reads the press release.
The release notes that those figures are below the values from February 2020, the month before the pandemic. For details on the exact definitions, definitely read the release which also states that Hurricane Ian did not have an effect on either number.
Data on individual states will be released on November 18.
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