From CNN's Alicia Wallace, Nicole Goodkind and Krystal Hur
“We’re expecting to see moderate growth” in the November jobs report, said Karin Kimbrough, LinkedIn’s chief economist. “And if our own data is any predictor, we’re actually thinking that it’s going to be a slightly underwhelming number.”
Economists polled by Refinitiv anticipate employment growth of 180,000 jobs last month — but their estimates range from 100,000 to 275,000.
The market will be closely watching the revisions for September and October to see if job gains have been weaker (or stronger) than previously thought.
The November report will likely get bumps from the return of striking autoworkers and actors. The BLS strike report shows that strikes ended in November for 25,300 UAW workers at the Big Three and 16,000 SAG-AFTRA workers.
October’s 150,000 net gain was among the smallest monthly gains seen in the past three years; however, monthly payroll gains remain well above the neutral rate of 70,000 to 100,000 jobs needed to keep up with population growth.
“For the last 10 months or so, jobs numbers have been revised downwards by an average of over 30,000,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job site ZipRecruiter. “If we see more downward revisions, then I think many people will conclude that the labor market is even weaker than it looked initially and is cooling quite rapidly.”
US employers announced 45,510 job cuts last month, according to data released Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s a 24% increase from October but a 41% drop from a year before, when tech companies were slashing jobs after bulking up during the pandemic.
Year to date, companies have announced plans to make 686,860 job cuts, according to the Challenger report. Outside of 2020, that’s the highest January-through-November total since 2009, when 1.24 million cuts were announced.
First-time claims for unemployment benefits, considered a proxy for layoffs, ticked up to 220,000 for the week ended December 2, according to Department of Labor data released Thursday.
Also, while first-time claims for unemployment benefits remain low, Labor Department data also indicates that people are staying unemployed for longer.
Continuing claims, filed by people who have received at least one week of unemployment benefits, have steadily marched higher in recent weeks and hit a yearly high of 1.925 million in mid-November. As of November 25, they dipped to 1.861 million.
While that exceeds the historically low continuing claims seen in 2019, it remains well below longer-term averages.
Economists had anticipated 180,000 jobs in October as well, but that total fell short of estimates by 30,000 jobs.
“Some of the weakness last month may have been illusory, just due to the strikes,” Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job site ZipRecruiter, told CNN.
The United Auto Workers union, in an unprecedented and successful action, went on strike against the Big Three automakers of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis from mid-September through the end of October.
October’s employment report included 33,200 jobs counted as lost in the motor vehicles and parts industry. BLS attributed those declines to strike activity: The agency’s strike report for that month counted 25,300 Ford, GM and Stellantis workers on strike.
Additionally, the BLS strike report for November indicated that strikes ended for 16,000 SAG-AFTRA workers after the actors union and Hollywood studios reached an agreement in the early part of last month
From CNN's Hanna Ziady
A a time when multiple forces and crises — wars, geopolitical tensions, the pandemic’s lingering aftershocks, high inflation and steep borrowing costs — weigh on global growth, there have been few bright spots.
The US economy is one of them. Gross domestic product in the United States grew at a remarkable 5.2% in the third quarter, ahead of China, long the engine of global growth.
“The US has really outperformed relative to other countries for the past year,” Innes McFee, chief global economist for Oxford Economics, told CNN.
The United States has powered ahead of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and other advanced economies this year.
The IMF now expects US GDP to expand by 2.1% this year and 1.5% in 2024 — more than double the growth rates forecast for the UK economy and well ahead of the euro area, which is predicted to grow 0.7% this year and 1.2% next year.
Much of that growth has been powered by consumer spending. And while Americans have tapped their piggy banks excessively during the past couple of years, savings accounts in other countries have been left relatively untouched.
Additionally, the United States has not yet felt the full impact of higher interest rates. Mortgage holders and corporate borrowers typically have to refinance less frequently in the United States than in other countries, resulting in monetary policy taking longer to feed through to the economy.
The labor market is "very much being held back by high interest rates,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job site ZipRecruiter, noting the effects of the Federal Reserve's inflation-battling monetary policy tightening.
“Talk to any property investor and they say they’re not building because of high borrowing costs and low valuations … talk to manufacturers, and despite the various incentives and despite the huge amount of spending on factories, hiring is not really growing.”
As such, many investments are not going to reach their potential until rates come down, she said. The Fed has raised its benchmark lending rate to the highest level in 22 years in a monthslong battle to bring down inflation.
“Employers are saying that they hope and expect business activity to pick up in the back half of 2024,” she added.
“The unstated assumption there is that inflation will continue to come down, and the Fed will be able to start cutting rates.”
From CNN's Bryan Mena
Investors have mostly concluded that the Federal Reserve is done hiking interest rates, and are already looking toward rate cuts next year, possibly as early as in the first half of 2024.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell says: Not so fast.
“Having come so far so quickly, the [Fed] is moving forward carefully, as the risks of under- and over-tightening are becoming more balanced,” Powell said last week at a moderated discussion at Spelman College in Atlanta.
“It would be premature to conclude with confidence that we have achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate on when policy might ease,” he said.
At the central bank’s next policy meeting on December 12-13, the Fed is widely expected to hold interest rates steady at a 22-year high for the third consecutive meeting.
In this year’s seven Fed meetings so far, the Fed has hiked rates four times and held them steady three times. December’s Fed meeting will likely bring that to an even split for this year.
“We’re expecting to see moderate growth” in the November jobs report, said Karin Kimbrough, LinkedIn’s chief economist. “And if our own data is any predictor, we’re actually thinking that it’s going to be a slightly underwhelming number.”
Economists polled by Refinitiv anticipate employment growth of 180,000 jobs last month — but their estimates range from 100,000 to 275,000.
The market will be closely watching the revisions for September and October to see if job gains have been weaker (or stronger) than previously thought.
The November report will likely get bumps from the return of striking autoworkers and actors. The BLS strike report shows that strikes ended in November for 25,300 UAW workers at the Big Three and 16,000 SAG-AFTRA workers.
October’s 150,000 net gain was among the smallest monthly gains seen in the past three years; however, monthly payroll gains remain well above the neutral rate of 70,000 to 100,000 jobs needed to keep up with population growth.
“For the last 10 months or so, jobs numbers have been revised downwards by an average of over 30,000,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job site ZipRecruiter. “If we see more downward revisions, then I think many people will conclude that the labor market is even weaker than it looked initially and is cooling quite rapidly.”
US employers announced 45,510 job cuts last month, according to data released Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s a 24% increase from October but a 41% drop from a year before, when tech companies were slashing jobs after bulking up during the pandemic.
Year to date, companies have announced plans to make 686,860 job cuts, according to the Challenger report. Outside of 2020, that’s the highest January-through-November total since 2009, when 1.24 million cuts were announced.
First-time claims for unemployment benefits, considered a proxy for layoffs, ticked up to 220,000 for the week ended December 2, according to Department of Labor data released Thursday.
Also, while first-time claims for unemployment benefits remain low, Labor Department data also indicates that people are staying unemployed for longer.
Continuing claims, filed by people who have received at least one week of unemployment benefits, have steadily marched higher in recent weeks and hit a yearly high of 1.925 million in mid-November. As of November 25, they dipped to 1.861 million.
While that exceeds the historically low continuing claims seen in 2019, it remains well below longer-term averages.
Economists had anticipated 180,000 jobs in October as well, but that total fell short of estimates by 30,000 jobs.
“Some of the weakness last month may have been illusory, just due to the strikes,” Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job site ZipRecruiter, told CNN.
The United Auto Workers union, in an unprecedented and successful action, went on strike against the Big Three automakers of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis from mid-September through the end of October.
October’s employment report included 33,200 jobs counted as lost in the motor vehicles and parts industry. BLS attributed those declines to strike activity: The agency’s strike report for that month counted 25,300 Ford, GM and Stellantis workers on strike.
Additionally, the BLS strike report for November indicated that strikes ended for 16,000 SAG-AFTRA workers after the actors union and Hollywood studios reached an agreement in the early part of last month
A a time when multiple forces and crises — wars, geopolitical tensions, the pandemic’s lingering aftershocks, high inflation and steep borrowing costs — weigh on global growth, there have been few bright spots.
The US economy is one of them. Gross domestic product in the United States grew at a remarkable 5.2% in the third quarter, ahead of China, long the engine of global growth.
“The US has really outperformed relative to other countries for the past year,” Innes McFee, chief global economist for Oxford Economics, told CNN.
The United States has powered ahead of the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and other advanced economies this year.
The IMF now expects US GDP to expand by 2.1% this year and 1.5% in 2024 — more than double the growth rates forecast for the UK economy and well ahead of the euro area, which is predicted to grow 0.7% this year and 1.2% next year.
Much of that growth has been powered by consumer spending. And while Americans have tapped their piggy banks excessively during the past couple of years, savings accounts in other countries have been left relatively untouched.
Additionally, the United States has not yet felt the full impact of higher interest rates. Mortgage holders and corporate borrowers typically have to refinance less frequently in the United States than in other countries, resulting in monetary policy taking longer to feed through to the economy.
The labor market is "very much being held back by high interest rates,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job site ZipRecruiter, noting the effects of the Federal Reserve's inflation-battling monetary policy tightening.
“Talk to any property investor and they say they’re not building because of high borrowing costs and low valuations … talk to manufacturers, and despite the various incentives and despite the huge amount of spending on factories, hiring is not really growing.”
As such, many investments are not going to reach their potential until rates come down, she said. The Fed has raised its benchmark lending rate to the highest level in 22 years in a monthslong battle to bring down inflation.
“Employers are saying that they hope and expect business activity to pick up in the back half of 2024,” she added.
“The unstated assumption there is that inflation will continue to come down, and the Fed will be able to start cutting rates.”
Investors have mostly concluded that the Federal Reserve is done hiking interest rates, and are already looking toward rate cuts next year, possibly as early as in the first half of 2024.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell says: Not so fast.
“Having come so far so quickly, the [Fed] is moving forward carefully, as the risks of under- and over-tightening are becoming more balanced,” Powell said last week at a moderated discussion at Spelman College in Atlanta.
“It would be premature to conclude with confidence that we have achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate on when policy might ease,” he said.
At the central bank’s next policy meeting on December 12-13, the Fed is widely expected to hold interest rates steady at a 22-year high for the third consecutive meeting.
In this year’s seven Fed meetings so far, the Fed has hiked rates four times and held them steady three times. December’s Fed meeting will likely bring that to an even split for this year.
