McDonald's restaurant employees rally near the American Apparel factory after walking off the job to demand a $15 per hour wage and union rights during nationwide 'Fight for $15 Day of Disruption' protests on Nov. 29, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ David McNew)
Unemployment rate in the United States dropped from 4.9 percent to 4.6 percent in November, while the economy added 178,000 jobs during the period. The first employment report released by the Labor Department since Donald Trump won the presidential election showed the decline in unemployment rate was steepest since August 2007.
"It looks like firms are pretty bullish about what they're going to see in 2017 and are continuing their strong hiring of the past few years," Washington Post quoted CUNA Mutual Group chief economist Steve Rick as saying. According to Rick, this is a good sign for the incoming US administration.
While the data adds credence to reports that the U.S. economy is growing healthily, wage growth was below expectations. Nevertheless, most analysts are of the view that the Federal Reserve will raise rates at its next meeting.
The next two-day policy meeting of the Federal Reserve will be held on Dec. 13 and 14. The central bank of the United States may perhaps raise the interest rate sometime soon as the country's economy was progressing well, BBC quoted Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen as saying.
Latest figures suggest that the US economy grew at a rate of 3.2 percent annually in the third quarter of 2016. The employment report was the final hurdle on the way of an interest hike in December, but it has been cleared credibly, the report quoted Aberdeen Asset Management investment manager, Luke Bartholomew, as saying.
On an average, the U.S. economy has been generating jobs at 180,000 employments every month during 2016, but it has been down on the average of 229,000, which was recorded in 2015. The robust job figures during November notwithstanding, even earnings did not grow as per expectations. In fact, the mean hourly earnings dropped 0.1 percent compared to October, resulting in a reduced the annual increase in wages from 2.8 percent in October to 2.5 percent in November.
Meanwhile, Democrats did not lose the opportunity to project the employment report as evidence of President Obama's success in creating a more robust economy for Trump to over now. According to the Labor Department deputy secretary, Christopher Lu, it is difficult to envisage a more stark disparity between the economy Obama is passing off to the President-elect and what he had inherited.
Watch this video about the U.S. economy and the added 178,000 jobs in November:
