November Employment Report: 321,000 Jobs, 5.8% Unemployment Rate

From the BLS:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 321,000 in November, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.8 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
...
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from +256,000 to +271,000, and the change for October was revised from +214,000 to +243,000. With these revisions, employment gains in September and October combined were 44,000 more than previously reported.

Click on graph for larger image.

The first graph shows the monthly change in payroll jobs, ex-Census (meaning the impact of the decennial Census temporary hires and layoffs is removed to show the underlying payroll changes).

Ten consecutive months over 200 thousand.

Employment is now up 2.73 million year-over-year.

Total employment is now 1.7 million above the pre-recession peak.

The second graph shows the employment population ratio and the participation rate.

The Labor Force Participation Rate was unchanged in November at 62.8%. This is the percentage of the working age population in the labor force.   A large portion of the recent decline in the participation rate is due to demographics.

The Employment-Population ratio was unchanged at 59.2% (black line).

I'll post the 25 to 54 age group employment-population ratio graph later.

The third graph shows the unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate was unchanged in November at 5.8%.

This was well above expectations, and with the upward revisions to prior months, this was a strong report.  Party like it's 1999!

I'll have much more later ...