the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Washington DC, (12/02/22 8:33am) total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 263,000 in November, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, health care, and government. Employment declined in retail trade and in transportation and warehousing.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent in November and has been in a narrow range of 3.5 percent to 3.7 percent since March. The number of unemployed persons was essentially unchanged at 6.0 million in November.
Among the unemployed, the number of permanent job losers rose by 127,000 to 1.4 million in November. The number of persons on temporary layoff changed little at 803,000. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.2 million in November. The long-term unemployed accounted for 20.6 percent of all unemployed persons.
Both the labor force participation rate, at 62.1 percent, and the employment-population ratio, at 59.9 percent, were little changed in November and have shown little net change since early this year. These measures are each 1.3 percentage points below their values in February 2020, prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.