U.S. jobs data to show economy’s resilience
U.S. employers likely hired new workers at a fairly brisk clip last month, underscoring the economy’s resilience in the face of slowing global demand.
Employers probably added 231,000 new jobs to their payrolls after boosting them by 248,000 in September, according to a Reuters survey of economists. The unemployment rate is forecast holding steady at a six-year low of 5.9 percent.
“It all speaks to the story that the U.S. can sustain pretty strong growth even when there are concerns about growth slowing in places like China and the euro zone,” said Jeff Greenberg, a senior economist at JP Morgan Private Bank in New York.
Job growth has exceeded 200,000 in seven of the last eight months, sufficient strength to keep the economy on a higher growth path after it expanded at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter.
The Federal Reserve last month struck a fairly upbeat tune on the jobs picture as it ended its bond buying program, dropping its characterization of labor market slack as “significant” and replacing it with “gradually diminishing.”
Wage growth has been the missing piece of the jobs recovery and without significant increases, most economists say the Fed will be in no rush to lift benchmark lending rates that it has kept near zero since December 2008.
The employment report is expected to show that average hourly earnings increased 0.2 percent last month after being flat in September. That would leave the year-on-year change at a tepid 2.1 percent.
Investors will also watch other metrics on Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s so-called dashboard, such as the labor force participation rate and the ranks of the long-term unemployed, for clues on the timing of the first rate hike.
The participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job, is expected to bounce back after two straight months of declines.
Retail hiring is also expected to have accelerated as stores gear up for a busy holiday shopping season, but the closure of casinos in New Jersey is expected to have slowed employment gains in the leisure and hospitality sector.
Source: reuters-U.S. jobs data to show economy’s resilience
