Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in October

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The American economy added 214,000 new jobs in October, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth clocked in at 124,000. That’s about the same as last month—in fact, about the same as the past nine months—and it’s a fairly solid number. In addition, the headline unemployment rate ticked down to 5.8 percent, and this was a real gain, not a chimera due to more people giving up and leaving the workforce. In fact, both the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio were up.

This is all good news. It’s not evidence of a roaring economy, but it’s solid good news. As usual, the main blemish comes in wage growth, which continues to be stuck at about zero after accounting for inflation. In other words, the economy is growing, but it’s still not growing fast enough to truly tighten up the labor market. When we start seeing healthy wage gains, that will be the first sign that we’ve truly put the Great Recession behind us. We’re not there yet.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate