US economy adds 64,000 jobs in November, beats expectations

The US economy added 64,000 jobs in November, beating economists’ expectations. The unemployment rate has remained little changed from September, at 4.6 percent for the year’s penultimate month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed on Tuesday. The release of November’s jobs report was delayed due to the government shutdown that went from October 1 through November 12, and the October jobs report was not released due to the shutdown. 

The largest gain in jobs was in the healthcare sector, with 46,000 jobs added. Of that total, 24,000 were in ambulatory health care services, 11,000 were in hospitals, and 11,000 were in nursing and residential care facilities. Construction saw 28,000 jobs added, and 18,000 jobs were added in social assistance. Transportation and warehousing saw a decrease in 18,000 jobs. The BLS noted that the federal government went down by 6,000 jobs, with a total of federal government employment going down by 271,000 since January. 

The unemployment rate, while virtually unchanged from September, is up slightly from November 2024, when the unemployment rate was 4.2 percent. Among major worker groups, the unemployment rate for teenagers was 16.3 percent in November, which was up from September. Other worker groups saw little change in their unemployment rates, including adult men (4.1 percent), adult women (4.1 percent), white (3.9 percent), black (8.3 percent), Asian (3.6 percent), and Hispanic (5.0 percent). 

The labor force participation rate and employment-population ratio remained little changed from September, at 62.5 and 59.6 percent, respectively. The number of people employed part-time for economic reasons rose 909,000 from September to 5.5 million in November. 

Per CNBC, the report was better than expected by experts, with economists surveyed by the Dow Jones predicting that there would be an increase of just 45,000 jobs. Global X head of investment strategy Scott Helfstein said, "Job growth came in better than the consensus expectation, but not enough to give an all-clear sign as unemployment ticked up. This keeps another Fed cut for early next year on the table, which may help stabilize equity prices going into year end."