Jobless rate down; wages on the rise

WASHINGTON (PAI) —The U.S. unemployment rate declined 0.1 percent in October, to 4.9 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, as businesses created a net of 142,000 new jobs last month. Governments added another 19,000 jobs.

Despite the decline, and other positive statistics, three-fourths of the U.S. people still believe the country is on the wrong track, according to the recent American Values Survey.

“The jobs gap shrunk, from 1.4 million in September to 1.1 million in October,” said the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, referring to the number of new jobs the economy still must create to account for population growth and new entrants to the labor market. “But wage growth increased 2.8 percent over the year, the sign of a tightening labor market where workers may be starting to gain some leverage,” added EPI analyst Elise Gould.

There were 7.787 million unemployed people in October, 152,000 fewer than the month before. That’s almost 50 percent below the peak of 15.35 million, when the stock market crashed in October 2009.

Some other key October 2016 data:

• The combined rate of the unemployed, under-employed and people so discouraged they stopped seeking work fell 0.2 percent in October to 9.5 percent. That’s the lowest rate since April 2008.

• Factories shed 9,000 jobs in October 2016, to 12.258 million.

• Construction firms added 11,000 workers in October, to 6.68 million, leaving 512,000 jobless building trades workers (5.7 percent).

• As usual, low-paying services led the way in creating jobs: Health care (+30,500), bars and restaurants (+9,900) and janitors (+7,200). Services claimed to create 141,000 new jobs in October. Trucking added 3,000 jobs. Mass transit lost 800.

Trump first touts infrastructure plan

President elect Donald Trump got off on the right foot with the construction industry.

During his victory speech in the early morning hours after he won the election for president, he made a completely unexpected remark about infrastructure repair.

"We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals," Trump said. "We're going to rebuild our infrastructure — which will become, by the way, second to none — and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it."

Trump during his campaign championed a trillion-dollar plan to fix the nation's infrastructure, even though it runs counter to the tax-cutting, no-additional federal spending philosophy of Congressional Republicans. Democrats are generally for the idea, conservatives, not so much.

Dan Holler, spokesman for the group Heritage Action for America, told Politico he questioned the job-creation claims for such plans, in the same way that conservatives have scoffed at the benefits of President Barack Obama’s $832 billion stimulus.

"Conservatives do not view infrastructure spending as an economic stimulus, and congressional Republicans rightly rejected that approach in 2009.” said Holler.