LAHORE MIRROR (Monitoring Desk)– The US unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent in September, the lowest rate since December 1969.
Figures from the Department of Labor also showed the US economy created 134,000 jobs during the month, fewer than were expected.
Significant jobs growth was seen in professional and business services, healthcare and construction.
Average hourly earnings rose at an annual rate of 2.8% in September, down from 2.9% in August.
Employment data for July and August were also revised to show an additional 87,000 jobs were created than first reported.
Hurricane Florence, which battered the US East Coast in mid-September, was cited by the Labor Department as a factor for some employment changes, specifically leisure and hospitality, which lost 18,000 jobs in the period.
The Labor Department said it was “impossible to quantify” the hurricane’s net effect on employment.
An unemployment rate of 3.7% is certainly quite an achievement.
From the low point in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the number with jobs has increased by almost twenty million.
But the very low unemployment rate also reflects an increase in the number not looking for work – if they are not looking they are not classified as unemployed.
A recent report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said that compared to other countries “a large share of the population remains at the fringes of the labour market”.
The OECD suggested a number of reasons, including what president Trump and many others have called the opioid crisis – the widespread misuse of and addiction to certain prescription drugs.
SOURCE: BBC NEWS
