After a difficult week for the stock market and rising trade tensions, the November jobs report provided evidence that the economy remains strong.
MILWAUKEE — At Western Building Products’ banana-shaped factory on the lip of the Menomonee River outside Milwaukee, the company’s president, Mark Willey, is wrangling with a stubborn problem: not enough workers.
“If someone is here a year, they never leave,” Mr. Willey said. “Our problem today is just finding people who want to work.”
It is a headache employers across the country are confronting, as Friday’s monthly jobs report from the government illustrated. The unemployment rate in November held steady at 3.7 percent — the lowest in nearly half a century. And while the pace of hiring slowed to 155,000 from October’s above-average showing, the parade of payroll gains marched on uninterrupted for the 98th month.
After a week in which the stock market suffered from motion sickness and presidential tweets caused trade tensions to flare, the labor market’s steadiness offered a dose of calm.
“It’s obviously an economy that is well in expansion mode but that is coming off the boil after a strong second and third quarter,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth Management. “So the state of the job market is good. It’s just that the pace of job creation is slowing a little bit.”
The average monthly job gain clocked in at 170,000 for the last three months and more than 200,000 for the year.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent in November, keeping the year-over-year average at 3.1 percent for the second month in a row, a level not seen since the recession. “If you have solid wage growth while productivity is improving, that is the best of both worlds,” Mr. Donabedian said.
The labor shortage has been a boon to workers who were hit hardest during the recession: Minimum-wage earners, African-Americans, Latinos and Americans with a high school degree or less have all seen their jobless rates decline in recent months.
Many of them were able to find jobs in health care, manufacturing, and transportation and warehousing, which were among the strongest job-creating sectors.
Employers added 27,000 manufacturing jobs in November, on top of nearly 300,000 positions in the previous 12 months.
Those who are doing the hiring, though, have repeatedly complained that the field of available workers has been picked through, and that people with sufficient skills are particularly scarce.
At Western in the Milwaukee area — where the jobless rate is down to 3 percent — workers bundled against the cold unloaded door frames on Friday.
