An Unhappy Payroll Report
The BLS says:
The unemployment rate rose to 5.0 percent in December, while nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (+18,000), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Job growth in several service-providing industries, including professional and technical services, health care, and food services, was largely offset by job losses in construction and manufacturing. Average hourly earnings rose by 7 cents, or 0.4 percent....
[T]he unemployment rate rose by 0.3 percentage point to 5.0 percent [in December]. A year earlier... the jobless rate was 4.4 percent.... In December, unemployment rates rose for several major worker groups--adult men (to 4.4 percent), adult women (4.4 percent), whites (4.4 percent), and Hispanics (6.3 percent). The unemployment rates for teenagers (17.1 percent) and blacks (9.0 percent) were little changed. The unemployment rate for Asians was 3.7 percent, not seasonally adjusted....
About 1.3 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in December. These individuals wanted and were available to work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, there were 363,000 discouraged workers in December, up from 274,000 a year earlier....
Total nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged at 138.5 million in December following gains of 159,000 in October and 115,000 in November...
