Below, EPI economists offer their initial insights on the November jobs report released this morning.

From EPI senior economist, Elise Gould (@eliselgould):

Read the full Twitter thread here.

Even with the weaker than expected November payroll numbers, job growth so far has already topped 6.1 million for 2021. As long as Nov is a blip, the 2021 average rate of 555,000 per month still means we are on track for a full recovery by the end of 2022.https://t.co/FqVVDDfXEN

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) December 3, 2021

Overall, payroll job gains were 210,00 in November (seasonally adjusted), but when we look at the non-seasonally adjusted series, we see gains of 778,000. This means the BLS makes a seasonal adjustment downwards in November to smooth the series, likely related to holiday hiring.

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) December 3, 2021

We can see here that retail trade is still down 176,000 from pre-pandemic levels. Leisure and hospitality tops the list of industry shortfalls since February 2020, with a deficit of 1.3 million jobs. Public sector employment comes in second, largely due to education job losses. pic.twitter.com/cHrE9Ok4yR

— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) December 3, 2021

From EPI president, Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz):

Read the full Twitter thread here. 

When the two surveys show different things, the rule of thumb is to emphasize the establishment survey, since it’s much bigger. We should do that here. However, the outrageously strong household survey says we do not need to get worked up about the 210k. 2/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) December 3, 2021

Wage growth for production/nonsupervisory workers slowed substantially in Nov in most industries. The broader dynamic is that slower job growth in the delta-period (Aug/Sept/Oct/Nov) has been accompanied by slower wage growth in most industries. 4/ pic.twitter.com/lU8EUWBdHk

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) December 3, 2021

And 3.9 MILLION workers are out of the labor force as a result of COVID (as in: if the LFPR hadn’t dropped since Feb 2020, there would be 3.9 million more people in the labor force). Counting those folks and others who are misclassified, the unemp rate would be 6.6%. 8/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) December 3, 2021