Employers added 281K jobs last month
WASHINGTON — U.S. job creation, slowed to a crawl by the hurricanes in September, fired back up last month as employers added more than a quarter-million new jobs. But for most workers, bigger wage gains remain elusive.
The government’s latest report on national employment, released Friday, showed that the labor market remains resilient. Employment snapped back last month with the addition of 261,000 jobs, after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma depressed payrolls in September. Workers at restaurants and bars returned to their jobs. Hiring in manufacturing picked up, even as it languished at retailers.
The unemployment rate fell to a 17-year low of 4.1 percent.
Although last month’s rate decline was because of a large drop in the size of the labor force, measures of unemployment and under-employment have come down significantly this year. The number of employees who are working parttime involuntarily — either because they could not find full-time jobs or could not get more hours from their employers — has declined by about 1.1 million from the start of the year.
For those with college degrees, the unemployment figure is now down to 2 percent. And the rate for those with less than high school diplomas, 5.7 percent in October, is the lowest in at least 25 years.
And yet, there is little indication that workers are broadly getting higher pay.
Friday’s Labor Department report said that average hourly earnings for all private-sector workers dropped 1 cent month, to $26.53, after rising 12 cents in September. Over the past 12 months, average pay for workers has risen just 2.4 percent, about the same pace as over the past three years.
That wages haven’t accelerated has been a puzzle. It could be there is more slack in the labor market, meaning more people are available for work than official unemployment statistics would suggest. Some think it’s because younger people replacing the large cohort of older employees are coming in at lower pay rates. There are also more part-timers today than before the 2007-09 recession, and these workers tend to get smaller pay raises than fulltime employees, said Cathy Barrera, chief economist for the jobs site ZipRecruiter.