Job Market Update: November Sees Largest Employment Increase of the Year

Source: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “The Employment Situation – November 2014″ 

November not only met, but exceeded, our expectations with one of the largest increases of employment over the past few years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its November 2014 unemployment report, showing an overall monthly gain of a whopping 321,000 jobs – 100,000+ more jobs than the previous month. January remains the only month of 2014 with job gains below 200,000. In total, since the beginning of the year 2.6 million jobs have been added to the US economy.

The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.8 percent, which is still the lowest rate we’ve seen since September 2008.

Revisions to prior months show that both September and October experienced more growth than previously reported. The September payroll number was revised from +256,000 to +271,000 and the October number from +214,000 to +243,000. That makes a combined 44,000 more jobs than initially reported.

A Closer Look at the Industries

November saw the highest increase in employment within professional and business services, retail trade, heath care and manufacturing. Employment in the professional and business services sector had the most significant gain (+86,000 – substantially higher than the average gain of 56,000 per month over the past 12 months), with numerous sub-sectors showing positive gains, including temporary help services (+23,000), accounting and bookkeeping (+16,000), and management and technical consulting services (+7,000).

Apropos for the holiday season, retail businesses added 50,000 jobs in November, over double the average gain of 22,000 jobs per month over the last year. We saw the most growth within motor vehicle and parts dealers, and clothing and accessories stores (both +11,000 respectively). Health care rose by 29,000 jobs, and over the past year has increased by 261,000 jobs. Manufacturing added 28,000 new jobs.

Taking revisions from the past two months, overall job growth has averaged 224,000 over the past year and 278,333 over the past three months. This time last year, the job gains were hovering between 150,000 and 200,000. Increases in our third quarter average and now into our forth quarter are a clear indicator that 2014 has been an instrumental year of job growth.

Household Survey Data

Both the unemployment rate (5.8 percent) and the number of unemployed persons (9.1 million) saw little to no change in November. Since January 2014, the unemployment rate and number of unemployed persons have declined by 1.2 percentage point and 1.7 million, respectively.