Delayed Jobs Report: November Added 64,000 Jobs, but Unemployment Hits a Four-year High

CNBC, CNN, Politico, the New York Times, Reuters, and Axios contributed to this report.

Wall Street finally got its hands on the November jobs report Tuesday — delayed by the government shutdown — and the vibe was basically: okay, but also yikes.

On paper, hiring rebounded. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 64,000 in November, beating the Dow Jones estimate of 45,000. Problem is, that gain came right after an October drop of 105,000 jobs, and the unemployment picture got worse.

The unemployment rate climbed to 4.6%, higher than expected and the highest since September 2021. And if you zoom out to the broader measure that captures discouraged workers and people stuck working part-time when they want full-time, that rate jumped to 8.7% — the highest since August 2021.

The BLS also dropped an abbreviated October count in the same release, and it was ugly: payrolls fell 105,000. That drop was heavily tied to government employment, which slid 162,000 in October as deferred layoffs and resignations kicked in. Government jobs fell another 6,000 in November, too.

And it wasn’t just October. The BLS also revised earlier numbers lower: August was adjusted down by 22,000 (to a loss of 26,000), and September was marked down 11,000.

Translation: the job market hasn’t just cooled — it’s been cooling, and the official numbers are slowly catching up.

If November’s gain felt thin, that’s because it was. The report shows most of the job growth came from one familiar engine:

• Health care: +46,000 jobs (more than 70% of the total);
• Construction: +28,000;
• Social assistance: +18,000.

Meanwhile, a couple sectors went the other direction:

• Transportation and warehousing: -18,000;
• Leisure and hospitality: -12,000.

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, summed it up bluntly: “The US economy is in a jobs recession,” noting the country has added only about 100,000 jobs in the last six months, mostly in health care thanks to an aging population.

The shutdown matters here. The BLS has warned the household survey — the one used to calculate unemployment — could be noisier for months because of missing data and delayed collection. In fact, October’s report famously didn’t even include an unemployment rate.

Even with that caveat, the pattern still looks familiar: companies aren’t hiring much, but they aren’t firing much either. That can still push unemployment up if more people enter the labor force and can’t find jobs quickly.

Another big signal: pay isn’t exactly surging.

Average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% in November (below the 0.3% estimate) and were up 3.5% year-over-year, the smallest annual gain since May 2021. That backs up the Fed’s long-running claim that the labor market isn’t the main driver of inflation right now — but it also means workers are seeing less momentum in raises.

Despite the softer tone, markets still aren’t betting big on another rate cut in January. Traders kept low odds on a January move — about a 24% chance, according to the CME FedWatch reading cited — basically unchanged after the report.

As Kay Haigh of Goldman Sachs Asset Management put it, the Fed is “unlikely to put much weight” on this release because of the data disruptions, and will pay closer attention to December’s numbers, due in early January.

Yes, November beat expectations. But it’s not exactly a victory lap when unemployment is rising, October was deeply negative, and most job growth is coming from one sector that always hires. The delayed report doesn’t scream “recession,” but it does wave a pretty big flag: the labor market is losing steam, and the next couple reports — with cleaner data — are going to matter a lot.