U.S. Hiring Surges as Eyes Turn to Fed
A job seeker looked over paperwork at Moline, Ill., career fair on Oct. 14. ENLARGE
A job seeker looked over paperwork at Moline, Ill., career fair on Oct. 14. Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News
By
Anna Louie Sussman And
Jeffrey Sparshott
Updated Nov. 6, 2015 10:09 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—U.S. employers hired at their strongest clip this year in October and wage growth picked up, signs of reassurance for Federal Reserve officials as they weigh an interest-rate raise before year’s end.
Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 271,000 in October, the Labor Department said Friday. Revisions showed employers added a combined 12,000 more jobs in September and August than previously estimated, bringing the three-month average through October to 187,000.
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Average hourly earnings of private-sector workers rose last month by 9 cents to $25.20 from October, and are up 2.5% from a year earlier. That’s a notable rise from the 2% average pace during the six-year expansion, suggesting that the economy is gaining traction and the steady pace of hiring is finally translating to long-awaited wage growth.
The unemployment rate, which is obtained from a separate survey of U.S. households, fell slightly to 5.0% in October, the lowest reading since April 2008 and down from 5.1% the prior month. It’s also a notch closer to Fed officials’ 4.9% median projection for its normal long-run level.
“From all sides, the October employment is very strong, painting a bright outlook for the economy,” said AllianceBernstein economist Joseph Carson in an analyst note. “The Federal Open Market Committee has no more excuses of delaying a gradual normalization of official rates.”
Officials on the FOMC, the Fed’s policy-setting panel, are looking for signs that the economy is moving toward full employment and that inflation will eventually head toward the central bank’s 2% target before they raise interest rates for the first time since 2006. In recent months, weakness in major overseas economies like China, Brazil and the eurozone has spilled into the U.S. economy, hitting firms with international exposure and contributing to weak employment reports in August and September.
But Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen has suggested that the U.S. could shake off those external factors. “If we were to move, say in December, it would be based on an expectation—which I believe is justified—that with an improving labor market and transitory factors fading, that inflation will move up to 2%,” she said Wednesday in congressional testimony.
After Friday’s report was released, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans, speaking on CNBC, said: “Strong wage growth would be a very helpful component to my outlook, and I think also pushing inflation up to 2%, which is what we need.” He did caution, however, that “it’s only one number.”
Fed officials will also have the November jobs report in hand before their next meeting in mid-December.
“With the FOMC already guiding the market towards a December rate lift-off, these numbers will only increase confidence that zero rates will be over before the new year,” said Jeremy Schwartz, an economist at Credit Suisse, in an analyst note.
Investors raised their expectations for the Fed to raise interest rates next month to more than 70%, up from 58% on Thursday, according to fed funds futures tracked by CME Group.
Not everyone agreed that the labor market could withstand ongoing weak growth in major trading partners. Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities USA, said the risk of global economic troubles continuing to work their way into the U.S. economy remained a “key concern.”
“My view on the Fed has been based on global deflation risks being imported,” he said in a note to clients. “The risks of waiting for the first rate hike are much smaller than the risks of moving too soon.”
Despite the strong reading, some signs of slack continued to linger. The share of Americans participating in the labor force remained steady at 62.4% in October, still the lowest reading since 1977.
In October, 7.9 million workers who wanted a job couldn’t find one, six years after the economic expansion began.
But a broad measure of unemployment that includes Americans stuck in part-time jobs or too discouraged to look for work fell to 9.8%, the lowest level since May 2008, largely due to a sharp drop in the number of involuntary part-time workers. There were 269,000 fewer people who described themselves as working “part-time for economic reasons” in October than September.
Job growth in October was concentrated in the private sector, which added 268,000 jobs, while government payrolls grew by only 3,000.
Many of those jobs were in professional and business services, a sector that added 78,000 jobs in October, a notable increase from an average of 52,000 per month over the prior 12 months. Administrative and support services accounted for 46,000 of the jobs added in this sector.
The health care sector continued its growth, adding 45,000 jobs in October to bring the total over the past year to 495,000. Retail and food services added 44,000 and 42,000 jobs respectively, and construction employment rose by 31,000.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had predicted payrolls would rise by 183,000 in October and the unemployment rate would fall to 5.0%.
Write to Anna Louie Sussman at anna.sussman@wsj.com and Jeffrey Sparshott at