The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported somewhat stronger than expected job growth in November, with employers adding 228,000 jobs. This brought the average for the last three months to 170,000. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent.
While the overall employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) ticked down by 0.1 percentage point, the EPOP for prime age workers rose by 0.2 percentage points, to 79.0 percent. This is an increase of 0.8 percentage points from the year-ago level, but is still 1.3 percentage points below the pre-recession peak.
In spite of measures indicating a continued tightening of the labor market, there is still little evidence of any notable acceleration in wage growth. The annualized growth rate of wages for the last three months, compared with the prior three months, is 2.6 percent, virtually identical to the 2.5 percent rate of increase over the last year.
The relatively low percentage of unemployment due to workers voluntarily quitting their jobs (11.3 percent) suggests that workers still do not feel very confident about their job prospects. This number was 12.3 percent a year ago and had peaked at more than 15.0 percent in 2000.
On the whole, this is a positive report, but one that indicates that the labor market can still tighten further without any major concerns about inflation.
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