Federal Reserve officials are taking the November jobs report with a big grain of salt.
The report, released Friday morning, estimated employers hired 227,000 new workers last month, beating economists’ expectations and surging past October’s dismal 36,000 new hires. But at the same time, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1% in October.
“It can be dangerous to focus too much on one release because it may be subject to revisions and reflect idiosyncratic factors like the impact of hurricanes and strikes,” Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack said Friday at an event hosted by The City Club of Cleveland. Overall, she said recent trends indicate the labor market is getting into better balance from the pandemic, when employers had to contend with shortages.
Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said last month’s job gains were higher than he anticipated, but said he’s not reading too much into it. Instead, he said he’s taking into account recent averages of monthly job gains. In that regard, the labor market is at a level of “sustainable full employment,” Goolsbee said Friday at a conference.
Full employment refers to a situation where labor supply and labor demand are in balance, meaning job seekers are able to find new work with relative ease and employers with open…
