WASHINGTON (AP) – Look past the booming November job gain of 321 000 reported Friday – the best figure in three years in the strongest year for United States hiring since 1999.
The job market has reached a new milestone on its road to full health: For the first time since the Great Recession ended 5½ years ago, America’s unemployed are now as likely to be hired as to stop looking for a job.
It means that employers have grown confident enough to fill more job vacancies. And it means the unemployed are now less likely to succumb to frustration.
The hiring surge owes much to solid consumer spending – on items like cars, electronics and restaurant meals. That, in turn, has given businesses the means to step up investment in machinery, computers and facilities.
Thanks to such spending, the economy grew at a 4.3 per cent annual pace from April through September – the healthiest six-month spurt since 2003. Employers have responded by adding a robust average of 241 000 jobs a month this year.
For each month, the government estimates the proportion of the unemployed who found work and the proportion who stopped looking. In November, 23 per cent of people who were out of work the previous month found jobs, and the same percentage gave up looking. (The figures are three-month averages, intended to smooth out volatility.)
That was the highest percentage of the unemployed to find work in any month since the recession officially ended in June 2009. A year ago, fewer than 19 per cent of the unemployed were finding jobs.
