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The U.S. economy added 261,000 jobs in October and the unemployment rate moved up to 3.7 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.
Economists had expected the economy to add 210,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to tick up to 3.6 percent. The range of forecasts by economists surveyed by Econoday was between a gain on payrolls of 125,000 to 250,000. On unemployment, the range of forecasts was for 3.5 percent to 3.7 percent.
The Labor Department’s Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey showed that there were 10.7 million job openings at the end of September, around 1.9 vacancies for every unemployed person. Federal Reserve officials frequently cite the vacancy ratio as evidence that the labor market is so tight that it risks fueling inflation.
“Despite the slowdown in growth, the labor market remains extremely tight, with the unemployment rate at a 50-year low, job vacancies still very high, and wage growth elevated,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The demand for labor from employers has proven highly resilient, adding to payrolls and vacancies even as the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates up at the fastest pace in decades.
