The U.S. economy added 245,000 jobs in November, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, less than half the 638,000 gained in October and well below the 440,000 that economists had forecast.
Even the healthcare industry, in the midst of a pandemic, reported 527,000 fewer workers last month than were on payrolls last February.
Adding “discouraged” workers, defined as those who have not applied for work in the preceding four weeks, to the official number of jobless would hike the U.S. unemployment rate from the official 6.7 percent to an actual 8.5 percent.
Workers joining the ranks of the discouraged who have stopped looking for work caused the official rate to fall 0.2 percent in November from October’s 6.9-percent rate.
The number of long-term unemployed – people without work for 27 weeks or longer – soared from 385,000 in October to 3.9 million in November, or 36.9 percent of all unemployed Americans. Those persons, largely from the construction, entertainment, music, restaurant, and retail industries, are not counted among the monthly unemployment figures because they no longer receive unemployment benefits.
The number of government jobs shrank by about 100,000 as temporary census workers ended their tenures; retail jobs also disappeared as more brick-and-mortar stores closed, with 550,000 fewer retail workers on the job now than last February, according to Labor Department figures.
Warehousing and transportation added 145,000 jobs ahead of the holiday shopping season.
Although November marked a seventh consecutive month of net job gains, if November’s sluggish hiring pace continues, the U.S. will not regain the number of jobs it had at the end of 2019 until 2024, Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, told the Wall Street Journal.
“Sentiment is largely negative because we know that we’re heading into a dark winter,” he added.
The most recent unemployment figures were collected before new lockdowns were implemented in California and Illinois, among other states re-imposing restrictions on business and movement.
Even before the new strictures, 14.8 million workers reported they were unable to work or had lost hours during the preceding four weeks because of mandated economic shutdowns.
Restaurant bookings showed a sharp decline later in November compared to earlier, according to the website OpenTable; the number of wage workers at retailers and restaurants also slipped during the month, according to HomeBase, which makes scheduling software.
As of 16 November, workers making less than $27,000 a year have lost 19.2 percent of jobs that existed in January, according to data kept by Harvard and Brown universities. Workers earning $27,000 to $60,000 have seen 4.7 percent of their jobs lost. Employees collecting more than $60,000 have seen 0.2-percent job growth.
TRENDPOST: As economic conditions worsen, crime rates such as homicides will rise, as will suicides, as people sink hopelessly into masked and isolated depression, seeing no hope for a brighter future.
Already unemployed, deep in debt, no hope for a college education, and even if getting one, living-wage job opportunities will be scant.
