MORE WOMEN LOOKING FOR WORK DROVE RISE IN UNEMPLOYMENT RATE

A jump in unemployment among women drove the overall increase in the October jobless rate in the U.S., according to data released Friday by the Department of Labor.

The number of women looking for a job rose by 212,000 to 2.8 million, from 2.6 million in September, the biggest increase since December. That helped push the unemployment rate for women to 3.7 percent, from 3.4 percent the previous month.

Overall, the total number of women employed remains near an all-time high, and gender data can be bumpy month-over-month. Still, measures of female employment and labor-force participation as a percentage of their overall population have declined for two straight months, a sign of growing weakness in the labor market.

It’s hard to pinpoint the reasons behind the deterioration, but child care remains a challenge for many parents. As a percentage of the female population, the number of employed workers is slowing.

“Historically, at this time of year, you tend to see a non-seasonally adjusted improvement in women — kids go back to school — there’s a little bit more seasonality in women’s employment,” said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “So to the extent that they’re not going back as much as one might expect would potentially explain that. But I think we need to be cautious in kind of overinterpreting any single month move in the household survey in general.”

The overall number of women either working or looking for a job fell last month by 100,000, to 76.9 million. Latina women, whose labor force size hit a record high in August in data going back to 2003, saw a second straight monthly contraction.

Men also saw an increase in unemployment and a drop in the employment-to-population ratio, but the moves were smaller than for women. Latino men over the age of 20 saw the biggest uptick in unemployment, with a rise to 3.8 percent from 3.2 percent.

The Black male unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent, matching levels in June and in 2019 that were the lowest ever in data going back to the early 1970s.