The U.S. Economy Added 165,000 Jobs in October

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Jeff Burnett, CEO of Labor Finders, and welcome to this month's Labor Market in a Minute.

How many jobs were added to the economy?

For the month of October, non-farm payroll employment increased by 165,000 jobs during the month. This is a significant increase from the prior month.

And as always is the case, the prior two months were revised, in this instance for August and September, and there was a net increase of 84,000 jobs for those two months.

And so this month's job data was significantly better than expectations.

What is this month's unemployment rate?

The unemployment rate is at 4.1%, slightly down from the prior month.

Job openings and layoffs are both at historic lows.

What is the inflation rate?

The Fed target rate for inflation is 2%, and for the last 12 months, inflation right now is running at 3.7% for all goods and services. This is an increase from the prior reading.

The Fed has one meeting remaining this year, and as you will recall, the Fed increased interest rates by one-quarter of a percent at their September meeting.

What is the status of the GDP?

GDP was at 2.1% for the first quarter, 1.5% for the second quarter, and is currently at 3.4%, as estimated for the third quarter.

So the U.S. economy is showing modest expansion, but not at a rapid pace considering the geopolitical events.

What industries are adding jobs this month?

Professional and business services increased by 70,000 jobs, healthcare increased by 31,000, transportation and warehousing increased by 25,000, and manufacturing increased by 19,000.

Other industries had little or no change.

What is the takeaway for employers on the employment and economic data?

It appears that employers are at a point of working their internal staff about as much as they can before they need to start using variable staffing.

And that might be staffing companies or other independent workers to get the work done before committing to hiring more full-time internal employees to their own payroll.

Additionally, employers, given the inflation headwinds, are now more willing to move forward with producing products and services.

What is the outlook for employers?

Given this somewhat prolonged state of uncertainty, employment data has been bumpy for quite some time. So I don't expect that to change soon.

The economic data, while it's not the most robust, has shown incredible resilience consistently now for many quarters.

Our economy continues to grow given domestic and worldwide politics with the war.

Once some of these big issues subside, we should be poised for a strong economy.

What are we seeing in the staffing industry?

There is a broad-based uptick in staffing usage across many industries and many occupations.

This supports the variable cost usage of services for employers, allowing them to ramp up and down quickly to control expenses.

So that's it for this month's Labor Market in a Minute.

Thank you.