More jobs were added in November than economists anticipated while unemployment remained unchanged, according to the Washington Post.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday that the economy added 228,000 jobs in November while unemployment remained at 4.1 percent.
The agency said that employment “continued to trend up” in fields such as professional and business services, manufacturing, and health care.
The number of jobs added to the economy in November exceeded 2017’s monthly average.
"Employment growth has averaged 174,000 per month thus far this year, compared with an average monthly gain of 187,000 in 2016," the agency's Acting Commissioner William J. Wiatrowski told NPR.
According to Market Watch, although unemployment remained unchanged at 4.1 percent, that rate is nearly a 17-year low.
The federal report added that among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for teenagers increased to 15.9 percent in November, while the jobless rates for adult men, adult women, whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics “showed little change.”
The report found that last month, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 5 cents to $26.55.
The Washington Post noted that that damage left by hurricanes “skewed” the last two employment reports, with the storms leaving hundreds of thousands of workers temporarily out of jobs. Many returned to work in October, inflating that month’s report.
“These are really strong numbers, which is pretty exciting, since this is our first clean read after the volatility associated with the hurricanes,” Josh Wright, chief economist at iCIMS, a hiring software firm, told the Post.
