Tag Archives: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said Friday that the national unemployment rate was down to 5.6 percent by year-end 2014, bringing that number down to its lowest level since June 2008. Economists had expected the jobless rate would fall slightly to 5.7 percent and that non-farm payrolls would increase by 245,000.

U.S. payrolls for November surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts, increasing at the highest rate in more than two years, according to a government estimate.

U.S. employers added 214,000 jobs last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday morning. Economists had expected payrolls would increase by 240,000, a slight decline from September's preliminary estimate of 248,000 new jobs added.

After giving a soft performance in August, the labor market came back strong last month, knocking the national unemployment rate down below the 6.0 percent mark for the first time in more than six years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an increase of 142,000 in U.S. payrolls last month, well short of the 230,000 predicted by economists. August's sudden slowdown snaps a six-month streak in which payroll growth came in at 200,000 or higher.

U.S. payrolls grew less than expected in July, a potential sign that the labor market recovery might be cooling following an early summer hiring spike.

The U.S. labor market outperformed expectations by a wide margin in June, with gains in both April and May also revised upward.

Though employment numbers have been in recovery, in a recent blog post for the company, RealtyTrac senior staff writer Octavio Nuiry argues that there is more to unemployment than percentages, and that a hidden actor is depressing housing market growth. Specifically, what concerns Nuiry most is the huge number of people dropping out of the labor force.

After surpassing expectations in April, the labor market performed slightly better than anticipated in May, according to numbers released Friday by the Department of Labor. According to the government, the economy added 217,000 new jobs last month, beating out a consensus forecast of 213,000 among economists surveyed by Econoday. The gain—a retreat from April's downwardly revised estimate of 282,000 jobs added—left the national unemployment rate unchanged at 6.3 percent.

Employers across the country added 288,000 jobs to their payrolls in April, bringing the unemployment rate down to a new post-crash low. According to the latest report from the Labor Department, the rate of unemployment last month fell to 6.3 percent, down nearly half a percentage point after a flat March. At an estimated 9.8 million, the number of unemployed people was down by 733,000.