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| US economy adds 171,000 new jobs | US economy adds 171,000 new jobs |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The US economy added 171,000 new jobs in October, which was much more than had been expected. | |
| But the href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm" title="Link to Labor Dept release" >official figures from the Labor Department showed that the unemployment rate still rose to 7.9%, having fallen to 7.8% in September, as more workers resumed the search for jobs. | |
| Only people who are currently looking for a job count as unemployed. | Only people who are currently looking for a job count as unemployed. |
| Unemployment is one of the key issues ahead of Tuesday's presidential election. | Unemployment is one of the key issues ahead of Tuesday's presidential election. |
| The figures were the last major set of economic data scheduled before the election and the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has made the state of the jobs market one of the central planks of his campaign. | |
| The number of jobs created in the previous two months was revised upwards, with an extra 34,000 jobs added in September and 50,000 added in August. | |
| Despite the new jobs, Barack Obama will still go to the polls with the highest rate of unemployment of any president seeking re-election since Franklin D Roosevelt. | |
| But the rise in the rate of unemployment may be seen as a sign of confidence in the economy, because it was caused by people who had given up looking for work returning to the job market, analysts say. | |
| Improved direction | |
| The Labor Department said in its release that Hurricane Sandy, which hit the East Coast of the US on 29 October, had had "no discernable effect" on the employment data. | |
| The number of involuntary part-time workers, who would prefer to be working full-time, fell 269,000 to 8.3 million, having risen by 582,000 in September. | |
| Kathy Jones from Charles Schwab said they were good numbers, but warned that: "We're way short of where we need to be to bring down the unemployment rate to where the Federal Reserve would like to see, closer to 6% than 8%." | |
| "We would need to see twice as many jobs as we're seeing, but the direction has improved." | |
| The average number of jobs added per month so far in 2012 has been 157,000, which is slightly ahead of the average of 153,000 in 2011. | |
| The category adding the most jobs in October was professional and business services, followed by healthcare and retailing. | |
| There was also a small increase in employment in the construction sector, which has been helped by a pick-up in house building. | |
| The average working week was 34.4 hours for the fourth month in a row, while the average hourly wage was down one cent at $23.58 (£14.69). |