Here we go again? Maybe. Another economic release, another opportunity to rethink yesterday’s conventional wisdom.
This morning’s news that employment growth was a lot more bubbly last month than economists expected. The consensus forecast called for a rise in nonfarm payrolls of just 80,000 for October, according to TheStreet.com. That would have been one of the smallest gains in recent years.
As it turned out, the gloom was misplaced: payrolls rose by 166,000 last month, the highest pace since May, as our chart below shows. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.7%. Given yesterday’s hefty drop in the stock market, today’s news at least offers a temporary reprieve from an otherwise gloomy week of news.
The rebound in job growth in October marks a striking reversal of the sluggish rate of expansion in previous months. From June through September, monthly employment growth was under 100,000, the longest stretch of subpar increases in recent memory.