With unemployment at 49year low, job growth continues to accelerate

WA S HING TON» Against the backdrop of Tuesday’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 Friday, some barometers of the job market suggest that it has room to strengthen even 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 U.S. unemployment dwindled to a now49year low, economists had been predicting that hiring would slow as the pool of jobless workers shrank. But so far, that hasn’t happened. In fact, job growth has accelerated this year from 2017.

And though some industries have complained about a lack of qualified applicants, other signs point to a pool of readily available workers, including the number of parttime workers who 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 per 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 Friday — the final snapshot of the labor market before Election Day — will show that a solid 190,000 jobs were added and that unemployment was un changed. Polls have suggested that while Americans generally approve of the economy’s performance, that sentiment hasn’t necessarily broadened voter support for President Donald Trump or Republican congressional candidates.

At some point, job growth will moderate and likely even reverse itself, particularly if the economy — now in its 10th year of expansion, the secondlongest such stretch on record — tips into recession. LaVorgna thinks the cause will most likely be the Federal Reserve’s ongoing interest rate hikes, which could squelch growth by making borrowing increasingly expensive for businesses and families. Or the Trump administration’s trade wars could weaken the economy enough to depress hiring.

Contrary to the concerns of some analysts, LaVorgna doesn’t envision an economywide shortage of available hires anytime soon.

“There is no evidence that the economy ever runs out of workers during an eco nomic expansion,” he said.

More employers are stepping up their pay increases to attract and retain workers. Retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and Target have been steadily raising their entrylevel wages, with Amazon paying $15 an hour starting Thursday.

A pickup in average pay suggests that companies have to work harder to fill their open positions. Higher pay can also draw people who aren’t working and hadn’t been seeking a job to begin looking.