November Unemployment Numbers
Basically, not good.
Nonfarm payroll employment fell sharply (-533,000) in November, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.5 to 6.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. November’s drop in payroll employment followed declines of 403,000 in September and 320,000 in October, as revised. Job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors in November.
This is really bad. Not only is the nonfarm payroll down sharply, but the numbers for October and September have been revised downwards. For October the revision is substantial, 80,000 more jobs lost, and for September 199,000 more jobs lost. Over the three months a over 1,270,000 jobs have been lost.
Both the number of unemployed persons (10.3 million) and the unemployment rate (6.7 percent) continued to increase in November. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, as recently announced by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of unemployed persons increased by 2.7 million, and the unemployment rate rose by 1.7 percentage points.