The Jobs Report – November 2023

Highlight

The economy added 199K jobs in November, beating the consensus of 185K and an improvement from last month’s gain of 150K. October was unrevised, but September was revised down by 35K. This has been the case all year that job gains have been downgraded in subsequent reports. Private payrolls added 150K jobs, better than last month’s 99K gain but slightly below the 159K estimate.   

What You Should To Know:

• The household survey reported a gain of 747K jobs, a sharp reversal from last month’s reported losses of 348K. The household survey tends to display more variability in job gains and losses than the establishment survey.  The large increase this month pushed the unemployment rate down to 3.7% from 3.9% last month. 
• Service producing jobs accounted for the majority of the gains in this report. Private service producing sectors added 121K jobs. The strongest sector was Education and Health Services which added 99K jobs. Underperforming industries included Retail trade which lost 38K, and Temporary Help which lost 14K.  
• Overtime hours worked was down to 2.9, matching the low for the post pandemic recovery. This along with the temporary help employment are considered leading indicators within the employment report. Weaknesses in both can be a warning for future reports.  
• November’s report saw a healthy rebound from October. Job gains were solid, especially in the Household report. The UAW strike that ended in October probably played a role in the volatility of the past two months’ reports. Some trends do remain though, including downward revisions to prior month’s gains and weakness in the leading indicators. On the whole, the report shows the labor market is still growing but at a slower rate and becoming more balanced. This should be welcome news for the Fed as the danger of an overheating labor market is fading. The Fed has increasingly indicated that there are no more rate hikes, and we see little in this report to challenge that.