Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 227,000 in November, and the unemployment rate changed little at 4.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment trended up in health care, leisure and hospitality, government, and social assistance. Retail trade lost jobs.
Uh huh.
Health "care" continues its march of +54,000, but how many are doctors and nurses? Ah, you already know that. All draw a check however, so that's "good."
Leisure and hospitality hired, which is interesting too given some of the internals. We'll get to that in a minute.
Retail trade, on the other hand, was down.
Oh, and in a new change, the last two months were revised up.
But....
On the unadjusted household numbers employment was negative 482,000. 579,000 more people decided to couch surf or otherwise not be engaged in the labor force. The employment/population ratio (again, unadjusted) was down two ticks (which implies about a 1.2 million job net loss) which squares about right with the employment-population ratio and unadjusted jobs number and on a 12 month rolling basis, adjusted for working-age population, employment is down 2.384 million.
That latter number, ex the pandemic, is a continuation and acceleration of a negative series we've seen for the last two years, implying deep structural problems within the labor force. Further, this comes in a month when it shouldn't -- for there to be a negative number of substance in January would not be unusual because of course temporary help for the holiday is let go then, but for it to come in November is -- since the exact opposite should be happening. It clearly isn't.
Why does the market like this (and it does, apparently, if futures are to be believed)? Well, it would seem that bad news being good news for the market continues, but I will warn that the internals show deterioration both in degreed professionals and also in IT, neither of which is something to cheer about.