November Jobs Report

November Jobs Report: it was in sort of good range. 203,000 jobs were added in November. The recent trend has improved since the summer, which has happened to some degree each summer to winter this recovery. The previous two reports number's were only slightly adjusted. The labor force participation rate changed little.

The unemployment rate fell from 7.3% to 7%, based on the numbers in the smaller Household Survey used for the unemployment rate. Al Jazeera called it a "five year low" which is depressing. Al Jazeera followed that up with "but wages barely increased". Duh, one has to happen before the other. If at any point in time you told me unemployment would be above 7% for five years in the United States I'd bet wages wouldn't grow, barely increase at best. Given a labor demand resulting in that high of unemployment for that long, either real wages would need to fall or productivity increase faster than wage growth to decrease unemployment (and both are happening to a slow extent). Increased demand for labor blah blah long run back to equilibrium.