America gained 64,000 jobs in Nov but lost 105,000 in Oct; unemployment rate at 4.6%

Washington: The United States gained a decent 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October as federal workers departed after cutbacks by the Trump administration, the government said in delayed reports.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 per cent, highest since 2021.

Both the October and November job creation numbers, released Tuesday by the Labor Department, came in late because of the 43-day federal government shutdown.

The November job gains came in higher than the 40,000 economists had forecast. The October job losses were caused by a 162,000 drop in federal workers, many of whom resigned at the end of fiscal year 2025 on Sept. 30 under pressure from billionaire Elon Musk’s purge of US government payrolls.

Labor Department revisions also knocked 33,000 jobs off August and September payrolls.

Workers’ average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% from October, the smallest gain since August 2023. Compared to a year earlier, pay was up 3.5%, the lowest since May 2021.

Healthcare employers added more than 46,000 jobs in November, accounting for more than two-thirds of the 69,000 private sector jobs created last month.

Manufacturing shed jobs for the seventh straight month, losing 5,000 jobs in November.

Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over

President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to rein in an outburst of inflation.

American companies are mostly holding onto the employees they have.

But they’re reluctant to hire new ones as they struggle to assess how to use artificial intelligence and how to adjust to Trump’s unpredictable policies, especially his double-digit taxes on imports from around the world.

The uncertainty leaves jobseekers struggling to find work or even land interviews. Federal Reserve policymakers are divided over whether the labor market needs more help from lower interest rates.