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US unemployment at 4.6% in November 2025.

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The S&P 500 index gained 5.9% the week of October 29th for its best gain since November 2022. For 2023 it has gained 14%. A jobs report showing less job growth of 150,000 slightly higher unemployment at 3.9% and slowing inflation, led the US Fed to pause raising interest rates. This has created optimism that inflation would gradually decline which is good for the economy.

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The stimulus checks in government pandemic aid packages are being spent prudently in the US. Government aid checks were sent out in the first wave since March 2020 and now again in the second wave in 2021. The stimulus pandemic checks are being allocated wisely. A Federal Reserve Bank of New York study shows that Americans saved about 36% of the first stimulus payment checks, 29% was spent, and 35% was used to pay down debt. For the second stimulus payment underway in 2021 this survey also shows Americans are expected to spend even less and use even more to pay down debts. With stores mostly closed, travel restricted, and consumers not having the opportunities to spend, and the sense of insecurity, additional income from unemployment checks, saving has increased. Americans saved $1.4 trillion in the first 9 months of 2020 compared to half that in the same period in 2019, according to analysis by Berenberg Economics. That amount is about 10% of household spending. The tight spending during 2020 means, say economic researchers, that spending will jump in 2021 after the vaccination drive. The trend is positive in that Americans tended not to save enough. People in China and India, tend to save more giving government a larger pool of savings to draw from in national infrastructure spending. In November 2020 Commerce Department estimate is that saving in the U.S. was 12.9%, up from 7.5% in November 2019. Anecdotal evidence shows U.S. savings accounts for people at the lower end of incomes have been depleted for years, hit by the unemployment of the 2009 recession. This was caused by errors by the banking community and business. To this is added people in arts and culture, people in professions involving contact, travel and leisure, food, during this pandemic ten years later. National priorities need to be set to bolster this part of American society and its core social fabric. The steps to bring home manufacturing jobs under Mr. Trump and the "Buy American" initiative under Mr. Biden is just the first step. More steps are needed and the resources, implementation and drive to bring America back to the healthy society of social cohesion and upward mobility aspirations under presidents Truman and Eisenhower in the 1950's. ...

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With a redrawing of the tech map and where the jobs are tech jobs shift to mainstream manufacturing, health, banking and retail, says this report in the NYT. These companies invest steadily in tech jobs but did not go into manic hiring sprees in the way Amazon or Alphabet once did. Overall employment in tech occupations increased to 6.39 million in November 2022, a 12% increase over the prior year. Chase, Amex, Nike, Wal-Mart and General Motors offer more stability for tech workers. Overall US tech workers increased from about 3 million workers in 2000 to over double that in 2022. Unemployment is at 2% for tech workers compared to 3.7% for workers overall. The problems at Alphabet and Amazon and layoffs are making it easier for mainstream retail and banking companies to hire tech workers. Chase Bank alone has over 50,000 tech workers.

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The US unemployment rate dropped in December 2010 to 9.4% from 9.8% in November, 2010.

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U.S. added 245,000 jobs in November. Unemployment rate drops from 6.9% to 6.7% as some Americans give up looking for work. The concern now is not the rate of job creation which is healthy but the drop outs from the workforce.  Concern arises from the long drawn out effects of the 2009 financial crisis and its effects which were seen over a decade. This report in NYT says the share of prime age Americans who were employed returned to the January 2008 level in 2019. And then the pandemic hits putting everything back again. This time if the lesson is learned about the long term damage to working families it is that this be tackled as a priority for the central bank, the U.S. Federal Reserve, an the Treasury, and Council of Economic Advisors, under the leadership of president Biden. Fortunately both Yellen and the new proposed head of the Council are students of labor markets and have stated this is one of the lessons they have learned and will act on. As this report says the opiate crisis, the risks of addiction increased, and there were links to the long period people were without jobs. The longer a person is without a job the more likely he will become permanently unemployed. The hope now is that the vaccination effort could bring people back to work quickly as business and life resumes in 2021, with workers being hired back. The share of prime age Americans working in November is 76.5% compared to 80.5% in February, which means this has to go up by about 4 percentage points. The people who are not in the labor force today but still want a job are 2.2 million. It is this that needs to be the focus of the new administration, central bank, and Congress. ...

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US unemployment rate was at about 3.7% for the third quarter 2022 and 263,000 jobs were added in November according to the Labor Department. Other estimates show that these numbers could be overstated by 500,000 for the year and likely to be revised. There is a shortage of labour after the pandemic and the labor participation rate is lower than before the pandemic. The Fed chairman Jay Powell discussed the strong labor market and his plan to attack inflation with rising housing, food, energy costs coupled with wage increases using Fed policy of raising interest rates. Rates could go up to 4.5% with another 0.75 % increase in December 2022.  Powell said in response to questions at the Brookings Institution last week that he was feeling his way through this inflation episode that was very different from previous bouts of inflation having started with supply chain issues that stemmed from the pandemic. It then became widespread with fears that it could get entrenched if a sharp stand is not taken by the Fed. Powell also says that he is acutely aware that he wanted to pause and see the effects of interest rate increases so that there is no overreaching that would hurt the lower income groups. He emphasized that lack of aggressive action by the Fed could let inflation go on for 4 or 5 years hurting these lower income groups the most because the wage increases would be more than wiped out by inflation. Finding the right balance is important to Powell as he looks to manage the risks on both sides of this issue- to hit inflation hard without hurting the lower income groups of society. ...

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Auto sales for 2010 are expected to come in at 11.5 million, a significant drop from the 17.5 million in 2000. A better job market expected to push the unemployment rate down a bit to 9.7% from 9.8% in November will help, but not by enough. Credit Suisse analyst Christopher Ceraso says each percentage point that the rate is above normal ( about 5%) keeps sales back by about a million auto sales on an annual basis. To get sales back to a 16 million range this would require an unemployment rate of 6%. Economists expect a better US economy in 2011 but the prospects remain uncertain for 2012, bringing unemployment down to about 8-9% if hiring picks up. The other concerns are high consumer debt and a rise in gasoline prices. If gas prices rise and buyers shift back to smaller vehicles, as they did in 2008, this would squeeze margins and profits. This is especially a concern as automobile companies have increased profits with a larger truck and large size vehicle component of sales, in a reverse shift after the shift to smaller cars in 2008-2009. Ford Motor is one example of this. It helps Ford use the extra profits to reduce its debt load but automakers have to be prepared for a sales shift to smaller cars in the face of higher gas prices....

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Some of the concern about the economy comes from the economic damage done by the coronavirus. The longer the shutdowns continue the more the damage. About 17 million have filed claims for unemployment benefits. The WSJ consensus of 57 economists is that 14.4 million jobs will be lost in coming months, and the unemployment rate will rise to a record 13% in June, from a 50 year low of 3.5% in February. The earliest the economy could go back to the level in February 2020 is 27 months says the WSJ economist survey. The brighter side of this comes in two aspects of this pandemic recovery curve. By flattening the curve and strict testing, contact tracing and isolation till the vaccine is developed about half the jobs lost can be recovered by the end of summer, says Moody's Analytics. The vaccine a year from now or in 9 months by November 2020 would allow the economy to recover faster. A more optimistic view comes from Daiwa Capital Markets which predicts many of people laid off will be recalled quickly allowing the labor market to recover in 6 months by September or October 2020. Only finance and real estate might take longer but most of the industries where the vast majority of jobs are could be back on their feet. The credible evidence supporting this perspective of a rebound comes from Colorado and Washington which require large employers to specify whether layoffs are temporary or permanent, 70% this year are temporary. Compare this to the prior 2009 recession where this figure was less than 1%- as reported by WSJ. The big push in this direction will be the $2 trillion that the Trump administration and U.S. Congress have committed to this task. Even more so is the determination of president Trump to protect American workers at all costs, that every job counts, and that businesses without exception to get the money have to show that workers are retained. The very success of the aid is being judged by how quickly people are back to work. Now for a look at where the situation is today- Oxford Economics, a UK based forecasting and consulting firm, projects 27.9 million jobs lost with industries other than those ordered to close making up 8 to 10 million of that number. It projects April's report will will capture late March layoffs. It will show cuts to 3.4 million business services workers, including lawyers, software groups, architects and consultants, advertising professionals, in addition to 1.5 million non-essential healthcare workers, 100,000 information workers. One conclusion of this report is that the virus does not discriminate across business groups and business service workers are also affected. Many companies that were hiring will cancel that move and many will cut hours worked. Many of these business services are not a priority. Hospitals are affected too, as they cut elective surgical procedures and routine care that are major revenue sources. Some are now charging for telemedicine visits to maintain some revenue stream. State and local governments employ 20 million workers. As tax receipts decline these local governments will face choices of cutting payrolls and services without enough federal government relief. In a way laying off workers and having them take unemployment benefits shifts that burden to the federal government so that services for overtime to police and paramedics, retention and deployment of nurses in schools.    ...

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In December 2023 job gains reported by the Labor Department for the US are 216,000 jobs, higher than November figure of 173,000. Unemployment is steady at 3.7%. In 2023 2.7 million jobs were created after 4.2 million jobs created in 2022. The pace exceeds that in the years before the pandemic and shows that the Biden administration's investments in manufacturing in the US, and in infrastructure, in science and technologies, are working. Of the world's advanced economies in OECD the US now leads, and its strong partnership with the EU, India, Vietnam and Japan, puts the US on a new trajectory of growth and improving the wellbeing of its people and partner nations.

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President Biden addressed the Nation from the Rose garden today November 7, 2024. His remarks were conciliatory. "You can't love your neighbor only when you agree."  "Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature." It is a remarkable end to a remarkable presidency which history will judge as perhaps a single term in which more was done than in any other 4 year term of a presidency, except for FDR in 1932 and Lincoln in 1861, tackling a once in a century pandemic, and rebuilding the economy, manufacturing, and infrastructure. And even correcting missteps on immigration by getting the legislation to fix it. It is a tall order for anyone who succeeds Biden though in the current post election situation there will be the typical euphoria on one side and losing on the other.  During the Republican sweep by Herbert Hoover in 1928 Franklin Roosevelt was elected governor of New York and he used the intervening years to 1932 to prepare for the monumental task ahead by testing his plan for economic recovery using New York and a couple of states from Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire, setting up the first unemployment insurance, shorter week, annual employment and other ideas to stabilize employment for one third of the US economy. Biden says he has asked his administration to work with Trump's team for the peaceful transition to a newly elected president. None of the fears about the transition came true with the new president getting a clear mandate to tackle the cost of living crisis for Americans. ...

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The U.S. jobs added for Dec. 2011, are 325,000, according to ADP figures, but the reliability of these figures has been questioned because of the different methods used in calculating the number. For Nov. 2011, the ADP number for private sector jobs added was 206,000. The same number from the Labor Department was 140,000. For June 2011 there was wide divergence- the ADP showed private sector jobs added as 157,000, the same number from the Labor Department was 57,000 jobs. For December 2010, ADP reported private sector jobs increased by 297,000, and official numbers showed 113,000. For December there are seasonal issues as well that affect the figures. Other factors affecting the jobs picture is the loss of jobs inthe government sector, and the gains in jobs predominantly coming from poorly paid retail and restaurant industries and fewer job gains in the better paid construction and manufacturing industries.

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Ezra Klein cites Ed Luce, who writes in the Financial Times, that the real unemployment rate in the U.S. is 11%, when you count people who have no job but have given up looking after months of fruitless searching. These are the long term unemployed and pose risks for the economy and for society. Compared to 2007, the percent of people in the U.S with a job or actively looking for work has dropped from 62.7% to 58.5%. Luce's 11% is arrived at by considering these 62.7%, including millions of workers who have quit looking but would start looking again if the labor market brightens. This is important because U.S. government statistics show unemployment dropping below 9% in November 2009, supposedly an improvemment, when its actually the reverse that is actually happening. The real underemployment is nearly 20%.

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43.6 million Americans are on food stamps More than 14% of the US population used food stamps in November 2010, according to the US Department of Agriculture. This is up 14% from a year earlier. The year over year rise in the use of food stamps shows 5,411,000 more people on food stamps. In the midwest industrial states Michigan has 19.4% of the population on food stamps, Wisconsin 13.6%, Ohio 15.4%, Illinois 13.5% In the larger states California has 9.5%, Florida 15.9%, New York 15.1%, Texas 15.6%. The year over year rise in the number of people on food stamps is largest in Texas 697,000, and in Florida with 563,000.

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This Journal editorial points out the U.S. labor force participation rate for Nov. 2012 declined to 63.6%. This happened even as the Labor Dept. reported a decline in unemployment from 7.9% to 7.7% for Nov. 2012. About three million fewer workers are looking for work now than in 2009- 86.8 million compared to 89.2 million.

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Izzo looks at the diverging picture presented by two Labor Department surveys of unemployment in the U.S. for July 2012- an increase of 163,000 jobs or 195,000 fewer people working. One, the Household Survey is based on survey of individual households counts people and the other the Establishment Survey based on a survey of employers counts jobs. If one person holds two jobs he would be counted twice in the Establishment Survey and once in the Household Survey. If a person is a unincorporated self employed person, a family employee who isn't paid, a farm worker who is employed but not paid he is counted in the Household Survey, but left out in the Establishment Survey. The Labor Department prepares a third measure of the number of people working by adjusting for multple jobholders and for workers not counted in the survey of businesses. By this third measure the U.S. economy added 108,000 jobs in July, which is far less than the 163,000 jobs shown added in the Establishment Survey. Because of the increase in parttime work it is likely that more people are doing multiple jobs which may explain some of this difference. Another reason could be the severe drought in the U.S. that may be reducing the opportunities for work for freelance construction maintenance and day laborers because of restrictions on water use. This shows that it takes several months of data to get some sense of where unemployment is headed, adjusting the numbers for unusual events or weather, and looking behind the numbers to the sectors generating jobs. In the first quarter of 2012 more jobs were generated in the U.S. because of a mild winter, followed by fewer jobs in the second quarter, which required looking at the two quarters together to get a better picture. Adjusting for the long term unemployed who have quit looking is also necessary to get a correct reading of U.S. unemployment levels....

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David Blanchford of Dartmouth College and Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute of International Economics argue in a recent paper that the true indicator of unemployment in this economy -with a low participation rate and millions dropping out of the labor market unable to find work- is the wage growth. This is particularly true with the U.S. Labor Department report of 288,000 new jobs in 2014 and a 6.3% unemployment rate, yet wages flat for March and April 2014, and no improvement in the participation rate. Blanchford says one should look at the wage growth and consider the rest to be noise. The Yellen Fed is looking closely at the participation rate.

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One of the quirks of the unemployment rate released by the Labor Department is that it is declining- declined to 8.1% from 8.2%, from March to April 2012- even though the number of unemployed may be increasing. When adjusted for the discouraged workers who would be working today in a more normal environment the unemployment rate today would be around 11%. Crucial in grasping unemployment numbers is the labor force participation rate- showing the number of working age Americans with jobs or looking for jobs- which is affected by the number of baby boomers retiring and leaving the work force, and by the number of workers who are too discouraged to look for work. The long term unemployed currently form about 40% of people unemployed in the U.S., which is quite high and cause for concern for Fed chairman Bernanke. Many of these long term unemployed it is feared will permanently drop out of the workforce, causing a drop in the productive potential of the economy and lowering economic growth. Already many have dropped out of the workforce, causing the labor force participation rate to decline faster than the gradual decline seen in the last decade as baby boomers retire. Between 2009 and 2012, a three year period, the labor force participation rate dropped about 2% to 63.6%, compared to the normal drop of 1.3% over a seven year period from 2000 to 2007. Combining the impact of the two trends, one demographic and the other a result of the 2008 global financial crisis and excessive risks in the U.S. banking system, leads analysts to to lower the longer term economic growth forecast for the U.S. to 2%, compared to the U.S. Fed's forecast for 2.3-2.6% growth....

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The U.S. Labor Department reported 120,000 jobs were added by private companies in March 2012. The U.S. government cut jobs by 1000. Manufacturing added 37,000 jobs, with a lot of these jobs in the auto industry. Health care, financial services and professional and business services added jobs. Retailers cut 34,000 jobs. Construction and transportation did not change. Average hourly earnings increased by 5 cents to $23.39, and wages increased by 2.1% over the prior year, still about the same as inflation; leaving workers with no real increase in incomes. The U.S. has to increase jobs by at least 100,000 jobs to keep up with population growth. March 2012 jobs numbers revealed what the U.S. Federal Reserve already knew when it pointed to weak growth in jobs ahead. It comes as the equity markets are sharply overextended after a couple of months of better job numbers. The unemployment rate declined from 8.3% to 8.2%, largely from fewer people looking for work.

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The growth in U.S. GDP was 1.7 % in 2011, yet unemployment dropped by 0.7% in the last 12 months to 8.3% by Feb. 2012. A pickup in hiring is seen in job figures. Christina Romer gives as an explanation to the rise in unemployment in 2009 to 10%, more than expected, and the drop since then, to the overreaction of companies to the financial crisis by laying off workers and freezing hiring- with hiring picking up as conditions return to normal levels. The unemployment rate as defined is also not an accurate measure of the jobs situation, as it reflects only workers who are looking for work, and many workers drop out of the jobs market when they are discouraged especially the long term unemployed. Taking into account people who have dropped out of the labor markets the unemployment rate was 11% in Nov. 2009, according to Luce in the Financial Times- in Ezra Klein, Washington Post 12/12/2011, Wonkbook: Real unemployment rate 11%. Lawrence Katz, Harvard Labor economist also cites this as one of three jobs crises in unemployment today that need to be addressed, the other two being: foreclosures and debt, and the low number of jobs added because of automated manufacturing- in Friedman, NYT, 12/10/11, The Next First 100 Days. Explanations for the low GDP growth as unemployment declines is a likely productivity slowdown. Prof. Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, sees a slowdown in productivity. Worker output for every hour worked, how productivity is measured, increased only 0.4% in 2011 and 0.9% in the last 7 quarters, and is trending downward in the longer term. A more likely explanation is that unemployment is still at higher levels but is understated in unemployment figures....