The U.S. economy created 271,000 jobs in October


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The American economy gained 271,000 jobs in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. It also revised estimates from August and September upwards by a total of 12,000. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate remained effectively unchanged at 5 percent.
In other good signs, the labor force participation rate stayed at 62.4 percent and wages grew 2.5 percent from a year ago. That's noticeably higher than the recent trend, but we'll need another month or two to know if this is a real liftoff.
Overall, job gains averaged 187,000 during the last three months. But it will take at least 246,000 a month to close the hole left by the Great Recession by the summer of 2017.
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Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.
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