November saw 245,000 jobs overall added compared to 610,000 in October.

By Manuel Gutierrez, Consulting Economist to NKBA

November’s employment report was somewhat disappointing as private employers added only 345,000 jobs. The total new jobs figure was even lower, after accounting for the loss of 100,000 government jobs, resulting in the headline total of 245,000 new jobs added in November (Figure 1).

Despite the number of jobs added for the month, which historically would have been considered strong, the U.S. is still nearly 10 million jobs short of employment levels at the beginning of the year. In February, U.S. employment had reached 152.5 million jobs, but the pandemic and ensuing shutdown reduced that to slightly over 130 million just two months later. Total employment today has rebounded to 142.6 million jobs.

The biggest contributors to last month’s job growth, shown in Figure 2, were Transportation & Warehousing, accounting for 42% of the jobs added. Professional & Business Services was next at 17%, while Health Care and Entertainment added 13% apiece. These top four groups combined accounted for 85%  of November’s new jobs.

Within the industries that impact of our members’ businesses, Construction and Manufacturing jointly added 16% to total job growth.

Among November’s job losers — other than the government — were the two sectors among the hardest hit overall by the pandemic, Hospitality and Retail. Employment in Hospitality is still 20% lower than where it stood at the beginning of the year.

Although the Retail category lost 35,000 jobs in November, it has recovered most of those lost since the onset of the pandemic. The number of retail jobs today is just 3.2% lower than February’s level, which is far better than the private employment gap, which today stands 6.5% below those levels. The ratio of people employed to total population remained virtually unchanged in November at 57.3%, although it is nearly four percentage points lower than the 61.2% back in January. Historically, today’s ratio is 7.4 points below its highest value at the turn of the century, when 64.7% of the working-age population were employed.

While the ratio has fallen among all age groups, the biggest decline is among the youngest workers between 16 and 19 years old. Proportionately, fewer young people are working each year since the early 1990s, when nearly half of them were employed. Today, that percentage stands at less than a third.

The November jobs report did signal improvements in other areas, although none were very dramatic. The unemployment rate overall fell by 0.2% to 6.7%, about half of its April level.

The unemployment rate among women in November was 0.5% below that of men, as shown in Figure 3. This is a return to the pattern prevalent since 1980, when female unemployment rates were generally lower than for males. The average difference, however, has been a scant ¼ of a percentage point.

Despite the improvement in the overall unemployment rate, the total number of unemployed people continues to be alarmingly high, at 10.7 million. Additionally, 6.7 million workers are employed part-time, 2 million more than at the beginning of the year. The total number of part-time workers has not budged over the last three months, even though it is much lower than the 11 million back in April, when many businesses reduced the number of work hours for many employees.