Today’s headline unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.0% as reported today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If we look in closer, decimal detail (as we did last month – “Rounding Unemployment“) we see that instead of a 0.1% drop in October and no change in November we have, really, a no-change situation for September through October.
The numbers (as computed by us from the BLS’s published Participation Rate and Employment Population Ratio) are as follows:
| U-3 % | |
|---|---|
| September | 5.051 |
| October | 5.036 |
| November | 5.046 |
There was a slight pick-up in the rate in November. But the good news is that this was due to the Labor Force Participation Rate increasing more than to offset the increase in the Employment Population rate.
In other words, although more of the population are now employed, there are more people who want to work.
