Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in November

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Merry Christmas! The American economy added 321,000 new jobs last month, 90,000 of which were needed to keep up with population growth. This means that net job growth clocked in at 231,000 jobs, which is….pretty good, actually. And virtually all of it came from private sector job growth. We’re still not in full-tilt recovery mode, but this is a genuinely positive number. The unemployment rate stayed steady at 5.8 percent.

And there are no hidden gotchas in these results. The unemployment rate didn’t stay steady just because folks were dropping out of the labor force. All the employment-related numbers changed by similar amounts last month, and the labor force participation rate remained unchanged at 62.8 percent. If you insist on finding a downside to this month’s jobs report, perhaps it’s the fact that the unemployment rate spiked up a bit for workers with no high school diploma. But that’s as likely to be a statistical blip as anything else.

Hourly earnings for all workers rose at an annualized rate of about 4.3 percent, which isn’t bad, but earnings for nonsupervisory workers were up only 2.3 percent, which is roughly flat when you adjust for inflation. I generally pay more attention to the latter number, which means that wages still aren’t showing much energy. This is, as usual, unsettling. It suggests that even with the economy adding jobs, there’s still a fair amount of slack in the labor market.

Still, that’s a lagging indicator. If we can manage to keep up this level of job growth over the next year, wages will probably start to show some life. Needless to say, though, that’s a big if. The world economy is sailing into headwinds at the moment, and there’s no telling if the United States can buck the trend. Perhaps falling oil prices will give us the added push we need. Perhaps.

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Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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