The month of November was a feather in the cap of stable employment scenario in the country witnessed over the last couple of months. During this month, various sectors contributed 211,000 jobs with an unemployment rate that remained the same as last month at 5.0 percent. Year on year, the jobless rate was down by 0.8 percentage and unemployed persons by a whopping 1.1 million.
Let’s unveil the monthly news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S Department of Labor titled “The Employment Situation – November 2015”, which collates data from various sources to give you a comprehensive picture of the employment environment from a Household and Establishment point of view. In November 2015, Healthcare, Construction along with Professional & Technical Services made good gains whereas Information and Mining lost considerable number of jobs.
Unemployment Rate Among Major Workers Groups
- Adult Men – 4.7%
- Adult Women – 4.6%
- Teenagers – 15.9%
The jobless rate among Teenagers has remained a concern throughout the year while the rates for both adult men and women has remained stable in 2015.
Unemployment Rate Among Ethnic Groups
- Blacks – 9.4%
- Asians – 3.9%
- Whites – 4.3%
- Hispanics – 6.4%
Over the last couple of months, all ethnic groups have seen a small fall in jobless rates with no group exhibiting considerable drift.
General Highlights
- The number of people falling in the category of long-term unemployed accounted for 25.7 percent of the total unemployed persons in the country. During November, there were 2.1 million in this category.
- The number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons edged up by 319,000 to 6.1 million in November after a brief period of decline during September & October. Compared to the same period last year, involuntary part time workers was down by 765,000.
- A little over 1.7 million persons were categorized as marginally attached to workforce(had not looked for jobs in 4 weeks preceding the survey). It was down considerably by 392,000 persons.
- In the category above, 594,000 workers were tagged as discouraged workers since they believed no suitable job was available to them at the time of survey.
The overall employment in non farm payroll employment spiked by 211,000 during this month, more or less around the average monthly gain of 237,000 during the last 12 months. Construction, Health Care, Professional & Technical services were biggest beneficiaries of job growth while Mining Information were the biggest losers.
Employment Data in Various Industries(Top Performing)
1) Construction added 46,000 jobs to stand tall as the sector with maximum number of job additions. Over the year, construction has added a little over 259,000 jobs.
- Residential Specialty Trade Contractors – +26,000 jobs
2) Coming second in this category is Professional & Technical Services which added 28,000 jobs and 298,000, over the year.
- Accounting & Bookkeeping Services – +11,000 jobs
- Computer Systems Design & Related Services – +5,000 jobs.
3) The Mining industry continued to see a fall as it lost 11,000 jobs. This sector has lost over 123,000 jobs since December last year.
- Support Activities for Mining – 7,000 jobs
All other major industries such as government, wholesale trade & construction did not see major changes in its employment numbers during this month.
Other Highlights
- The average workweek for all employees came down by 0.1 hour to 34.5 hours during November 2015.
- For production and non-supervisory employees(private rolls), the average workweek was little changed at 33.7 hours.
- During November 2015, the average hourly earnings for all employees(private non farm payroll) was up by 4 cents at $25.52.