November Jobs Surge 211K, Higher Than Expected: December Rate Hike Looms Despite Slump In Weekly Earnings

It appears the December rate hike is now cemented following the BLS’ report that November jobs rose by 211K, higher than the 200K expected, and well above Janet Yellen’s “whisper” number of just 100,000 being sufficient. This follows an even stronger revision to the October number from 271K to a whopping 298K. The unemployment rate remained flat at 5.00%, in line with expectations.

While the headline jobs number was good, a less pleasant statistic emerges below the surface where we see that while average hourly earnings rose 0.2% as expected, this was down from last month’s revised 0.4%.

But an even worse picture emerges when looking at the average weekly earnings, which actually declined to $871.13 from $872.27 last month, which represents just a 2% increase from a year ago, matching the lowest print over the past year. This is the result of weekly hours worked declining from an upward revised 34.6 to 34.5

For those curious about the participation rate, it actually posted a small increase from a 38 year low of 62.4% to 62.5% as a result of the people not in the labor force declining from 94.5 to 94.4 million.