U.S Creates 261,000 Jobs in October

• U.S Creates 261,000 Jobs in October

U.S. businesses created fewer jobs than expected in October as the number of people that resumed work following hurricane disruption wasn’t enough to surpass economists’ expectation.

Companies in the U.S. created 261,000 jobs in the month, according to the Labor Department report released on Friday. This was below the 313,000 jobs expected by most analysts.

The biggest increase came from hospitality industry with low-income jobs from restaurants rising by 89,000 after a 98,000 drop in September. Professional and business services contributed 50,000 to the total job created in the month. While manufacturing and health care added 24,000 and 22,000, respectively.

However, unemployment rate improved to 4.1 percent from 4.2 percent in September, making it the lowest unemployment rate in 17 years. Experts were quick to attribute the improvement to the low number of unemployed workers when compared to the number of employed.

“Today’s report, albeit a little bit mixed, is still a relatively decent number. It still points towards the positive trend that we’ve seen in payroll growth over the last several months and the last couple of years actually,” said Tony Bedikian, head of global markets at Citizens Bank. “In general, the economy is moving along, though a little softer than many market participants anticipated.”

In addition to October report, September job number was revised up to 18,000 from an initially reported decline of 33,000. Also, August’s number was revised up from 169,000 to 208,000.

Once again, wage growth disappointed, with earnings slightly off by 1 cent an hour to 2.4 percent annualized gain. Economists attributed the weak wage growth to surge in the numbers of low-paid workers at restaurants, bringing down the average earnings.

The US dollar gained against the Euro after the report to $1.1633.