Nation expected to keep racking up job gains

WASHINGTON — Against the backdrop of next week’s midterm elections, the U.S. job market is the healthiest it’s been in at least two decades. And with another strong hiring report expected today, some barometers of the job market suggest that it has room to strengthen further. Businesses, hungry for workers, are advertising a record number of openings. Companies in October added the most jobs in eight months, a private survey found. Pay has been picking up. In the past year or so, as unemployment has dwindled to a now-49-year low, economists had been predicting that hiring would slow as the pool of jobless workers shrank. Yet so far that hasn’t happened. In fact, job growth has actually accelerated this year from 2017. And though some industries have complained of a lack of qualified applicants, other signs point to a pool of readily available workers, including the number of part-time workers who would prefer fulltime jobs. “It doesn’t seem to me that we’re anywhere near the point where, oh my God, we can’t find people,” said Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist for the Americas at Natixis, an asset management company. So far in 2018, employers have added a robust average of 208,000 jobs a month. That’s stronger than last year’s average of 182,000, though not quite at the sizzling pace of roughly 250,000 in 2015. Combined, all that hiring has been enough to cut the jobless rate to 3.7 percent, the lowest level since 1969. Economists have forecast that the October jobs report being released today — the final snapshot of the labor market before Election Day — will show that a solid 190,000 jobs were added and that unemployment was unchanged. Polls have suggested that while Americans generally approve of the economy’s performance, that sentiment hasn’t necessarily broadened voter support for President Trump or Republican congressional candidates.