The NFP (Non-farm payroll, or, in other words, "statistics about workers that are not farmers") just came out last Friday. It means a lot of things for markets and, obviously, the Federal Reserve, expecting that below a 5% unemployment rate, inflation is going to rise much. The NFP employment increased of +271,000 in October, and the unemployment rate stays at 5.0%. 26.8% of unemployed people are unemployed since 27+ weeks (long-term unemployed), the civilian labor force participation rate stayed at 62.4%. However, the number of persons employed part-time for economic reasons is at 5.1 million, or -269,000 persons compared to September. 665,000 workers are "discouraged workers", or people not looking for work because they believe no jobs is available for them.
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-yellens-labor-market-dashboard/ Yellen's Labor Market Dashboard, updated as of Nov 6.
The numbers should be taken into context with historical performance, downward revisions, and some of the other indicators that put the US on more of a downward trending path.
The numbers should be taken into context with historical performance, past downward revisions, and some of the other indicators that put the US on more of a downward trending path. The Fed loves to look at unemployment, GDP, and the current rate of inflation. These pieces of data are misleading. GDP has been reformulated and Q3 GDP was still far from impressive. The biggest thing that stands out to me is labor participation which is the lowest it has been since the 1978. If you were to break down the non farm payroll numbers you'd see that the jobs weren't particularly high paying.
