U.S. employers add 531,000 jobs in October as hiring rebounds

U.S. employers added 531,000 jobs in October, with unemployment rate dropping to 4.6 percent, indicating a hiring rebound as the Delta wave weakened, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday.

The latest data followed upwardly revised job gains of 312,000 in September, and upwardly revised job gains of 483,000 in August, when labor market recovery slowed amid a Delta variant-fueled COVID-19 surge. In July, job gains were over 1 million.

In October, job gains were significant in leisure and hospitality,  professional and business services, manufacturing, as well as transportation and warehousing. Employment in public education, however, declined over the month, following a drop in September.

People spend their leisure time at a pier in San Francisco, the United States, on Aug. 15, 2021. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

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Employment in leisure and hospitality increased by 164,000 in October. Professional and business services added 100,000 jobs in October, and employment in manufacturing increased by 60,000, the report showed.

In October, employment decreased in local government education and state government education, by 43,000 and 22,000, respectively. Employment increased slightly by 17,000 in private education.

Since February 2020, employment is down by 370,000 in local government education, by 205,000 in state government education, and by 148,000 in private education, according to the report.

The unemployment rate edged down by 0.2 percentage points to 4.6 percent in October, after dropping by 0.4 percentage points in the previous month. The figure was down considerably from its recent high in April 2020, yet remained well above the pre-pandemic level of 3.5 percent.

In October, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 11 cents to 30.96 dollars, following large increases in the prior six months.

The labor force participation rate was unchanged at 61.6 percent in October and has remained within a narrow range of 61.4 percent to 61.7 percent since June 2020, according to the report. The participation rate is still 1.7 percentage points lower than that of February 2020.

The monthly employment was released two days after the payroll data company Automatic Data Processing reported that U.S. private companies added 571,000 jobs in October, which also indicated a renewed momentum in the labor market recovery.

In the second quarter, job growth was robust due to vaccination progress and continued economic recovery. But amid a Delta variant-fueled COVID-19 surge, there was a marked slowdown in job growth in the third quarter.

The number of COVID-19 cases had been going up since June with the rapid spread of Delta, before the national outlook started to improve since early September, when case levels began to fall.

"The job market is revving back up as the Delta wave of the pandemic winds down," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, noting that job gains are accelerating across all industries.