Unemployment fell from 9.8% to 9.4% according to the BLS. The broader measure of unemployment, U6, fell from 17% to 16.7%.
Unemployment as measured by U3 is now at its lowest level since May of 2009. This is the largest single monthly drop in Unemployment in over a decade, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Those are good headline numbers, but job creation was only 103,000, well below expectations and far below the ADP report of over 250K.
So how do we explain the drop in the headline number with the lower job creation number?
I will be updating this diary this morning to discuss that.
Part of the answer is in the prior month revisions. As the New York Times reports:
The agency also revised estimates from the two earlier months, now saying that 210,000 jobs were created in October instead of 172,000, and 71,000 in November, instead of 39,000.
Taken together the revisions and the new numbers are close to expectations. You can make your own judgement about that explanation.
The best table of the alternate measures of unemployment are here:
http://bls.gov/...
There is always the danger when discussion these numbers to forget the real pain behind them. It is useful to remember, therefore, as the Wall Street Journal reports:
The unemployment rate, which is obtained from a separate household survey, fell to 9.4% last month, the lowest level since May 2009 and the biggest fall in more than a decade. Still, about 14.5 million people who would like to work can't get a job.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast payrolls would rise by 150,000 and that the jobless rate would fall slightly to 9.7%.
The U.S. unemployment rate has now been above 9% since May 2009, or 20 months. That is the longest stretch at such an elevated level since the Second World War. In the recession of the early 1980s, the jobless rate crept to 9% in March 1982 and remained above that mark until September 1983.