–October Payrolls +80,000; Private +104,000; Unemp Down to 9.012%
–Production Worker Pay Has Lowest Annual Gain Since February 2004.

By Denny Gulino

WASHINGTON (MNI) – October’s 104,000 private sector payrolls gains
were nearly equalled by big upward revisions for August and September,
as May and June emerge as the outlying downers and the four months since
as a return to the U.S. labor market’s longer-term mildly positive
trend.

The October jobs report Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
was mottled with positives, although the slight improvement in the
unemployment rate to 9.0% (9.012% vs. 9.085%) and the single month’s
80,000 net improvement in payrolls were not that impressive by
themselves.

“If you look at it now, we actually struggled a bit to try to give
some context, and you can pick the last four months,” BLS senior analyst
Tom Nardone said. “If you look at over-the-month changes this year you
had three really strong months, then May and June were really weak, and
the last four months average 117,000 a week,” he said. “That brings the
monthly average closer to that for the year, of 125,000 a month.”
Nardone is the chief of the BLS employment section and spoke to Market
News International in the data “lockup” just prior to publication.

The August-September revision added an exceptionally large number
to adjusted payrolls, 102,000, with the major additional gains spread
over government, leisure and hospitality, professional business services
and transportation. “It was really widespread,” he said. August, which
two revisions ago showed zero payroll additions, now has 104,000.

In addition there were sizable October improvements in measures of
the long-term unemployed, down 366,000 to 5.9 million; and in the number
of persons employed part time for economic reasons, down 374,000 to 8.9
million.

The number of so-called discouraged workers dropped 252,000 in
October, to less than a million. The rest in the “marginally attached”
to the labor force category, 1.6 million, had non-economic reasons for
not looking for work in the last month, like school attendance or family
responsibilities.

The seasonal adjustment process obscures October’s actual infusion
of new payroll cash into the economy. There were 883,000 additional
paycheck accounts being filled in the month — including 102,000 that
BLS estimates were missed by the monthly survey. The great bulk of the
883,000 is the usual fall influx of teachers back to their jobs.

Elsewhere in the October report, manufacturing defied expectations
by not posting a loss, growing by 5,000 after adjustment. Construction,
however, lost 20,000, giving back almost all of the 27,000 added in
September.

Health care added another 12,000 workers, part of a year’s increase
through October of 313,000 jobs.

Leisure and hospitality, which contributed additional jobs in the
August and September revisions, was up 22,000 in October and since its
trough in January 2010 has added 344,000 jobs.

Retail trade added 10,000 and motor vehicle and parts dealers
6,000. Retail trade has gained 156,000 jobs over the past 12 months.

Notable was the downspeeding of production workers wages in
October, slipping to an annual increase of 1.6%. “You have to go back
all the way to February 2004 to get a lower figure,” Nardone said. For
the newer series measuring all workers earnings, the annual increase
through October was 1.8%.

Although local and state government lost 24,000 in October, as
expected, the Postal Service bucked the trend and added 3,000.

The household survey positives in October “were gotten legimately,”
Nardone said, with a “decrease in the number of unemployed and an
increase in the number of employed, so it was not an issue of the labor
force getting smaller.”

The civilian labor-force participation rate stayed at 64.2% in
October and the employment-population ratio was little changed, the
report said, at 58.4%.

Expectations in a Market News International survey centered on a
gain of 95,000 payroll slots after seasonal adjustment and an
unemployment rate remaining at 9.1%.

** Market News International Washington Bureau: 202-371-2121 **

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