Employment increased by 245,000 jobs in November, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, marking the slowest month of job growth since the spring and far less than the 610,000 jobs added in October and the 711,000 added in September. Job losses occurred in accounting and bookkeeping and other sectors amid the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nevertheless the unemployment rate dipped two-tenths of a percentage point to 6.7 percent. While the 245,000 jobs would have been a good sign of growth last year, they represent a continued slowing of the pace of job growth after millions of job losses at the start of the year. The main job gains in November happened in the transportation and warehousing, professional and business services, and health care sectors. Employment declined in government and retail trade. While professional and business services gained, the accounting and bookkeeping area lost 2,400 jobs. Employment in professional and business services increased by 60,000, with about half the gain occurring in temporary help services, where 32,000 jobs were added. Professional and business services employment has declined 1.1 million since February.
“With the rise in cases and lack of stimulus, we expected that the hiring would begin to slow,” said Phil Noftsinger, executive vice president of CBIZ, a Top 100 Firm. “That’s unfortunate because we probably had an opportunity to arrest that a bit if we had acted sooner in terms of stimulus. Generally in the professional services category you saw the unemployment rate tick down. It’s just under 6 percent now. That sector is usually pretty strong and is usually in better shape than the overall group.”
Lanie Raphael is president at B. F. Saul Insurance, where she leads client service, business development, financial strategy, and team growth. She brings over 30 years of experience in commercial and high-net-worth insurance, with past executive roles at Fireman's Fund, AIG, and ACE Private Risk Services. Her background spans risk management, operations, marketing, and product development. Lanie is known for her hands-on leadership and focus on building strong client relationships.
Brooksley Born is the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Prof. Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com (a much cited website on the global economy), a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers, and a member of the FDIC's Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee. He is also a member of the private sector systemic risk council founded and chaired by Sheila Bair in 2012. Prof. Johnson is a weekly contributor to NYT.com's Economix, is a regular Bloomberg columnist, has a monthly article with Project Syndicate that runs in publications around the world, and has published high impact opinion pieces recently in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Republic, BusinessWeek and The Financial Times, among other places. In January 2010, he joined The Huffington Post as contributing business editor. Professor Johnson is the co-author, with James Kwak, of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and The Next Financial Meltdown, a bestselling assessment of the dangers now posed by the U.S. financial sector (published March 2010) and White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt and Why it Matters to You (April 2012). In his roles as a professor, research fellow and author, Professor Johnson's speaking engagements include paid appearances before various business groups, including financial institutions and other companies, as well before other groups that may have a political agenda. He is not on the board of any company, does not currently serve as a consultant to anyone, and does not work as an expert witness or conduct sponsored research. His investment portfolio comprises cash and broadly diversified mutual funds; he does not trade stocks, bonds, derivatives or other financial products actively. From March 2007 through the end of August 2008, Prof. Johnson was the International Monetary Fund's Economic Counselor (chief economist) and Director of its Research Department. He is a co-director of the NBER Africa Project, and works with nonprofits and think tanks around the world. Johnson holds a B.A. in economics and politics from the University of Oxford, an M.A. in economics from the University of Manchester, and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024.
The number of long-term unemployed (those who have been jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased in November by 385,000 to 3.9 million, accounting for 36.9 percent of the total number of unemployed, while the number of people who have been jobless 15 to 26 weeks declined by 760,000 to 1.9 million. The labor force participation rate edged down to 61.5 percent in November, or 1.9 percentage points below its February level. Average hourly earnings increased 9 cents to $29.58.
Noftsinger finds the renewal of stimulus talks in Washington an encouraging sign of progress. “It’s not ideal, but I think we’re starting to see the labor numbers begin to peak in terms of getting back to where we were in February in the context of a vaccine, the distribution of said vaccine, the reopening of the economy, and certainly any stimulus that we could find ourselves getting between now and those things happening,” he said.
CBIZ released its own monthly CBIZ Small Business Employment Index on Friday, reporting a 1.06 percent seasonally adjusted decrease for November, despite the job growth that usually occurs during the holiday shopping season. From a geographic standpoint, the West was the only U.S. region to see a hiring increase at 1.36 percent, while the Northeast saw a decrease of 1.79 percent, the Central region declined 1.43 percent and Southeast slipped 0.67 percent. Hiring declined in states that opened on or before May 15 by 1.73 percent and states that opened afterward by 0.97 percent.
Several industries experienced hiring declines, including technology, life sciences, construction, accommodation and food services, and real estate. On the plus side, hiring increased in arts and entertainment, which had experienced depressed trends since the spring. Noftsinger wasn’t sure how to explain the job growth in that sector. Hiring grew among nonprofits as well.
“There were some surprises in our metric,” said Noftsinger. “I would point to accomodation and food services, which had a strong bounce as restaurants and bars opened. That decline is indicative of some of the closures taking place in larger metropolitan areas. We’re starting to see that play out in those numbers. I would expect that to accelerate as we go into December and the cases continue to rise and the closures continue to happen.”
