U.S. job-growth and unemployment rates just released

Although Utah's October labor force figures won't be available for about two weeks, the national figures are available today. And, since I'm always nagging about using the year-to-year employment-change figures to understand the economy (check out this post), and since the Bureau of Labor Statistics press release doesn't include those figures, and since I've already looked them up and plotted them--I thought I share.

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The U.S. year-to-year change in nonfarm jobs for October 2011 was 1.1 percent (slightly below the 1.4 percent annual average growth for the last expansionary period). As you can see, job growth is trending upward (albeit slowly).

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The U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for October measured 9.0 percent. Jobless rates nationally are trending downward at an even slower rate reflecting a large pool of unemployed and also workers entering or re-entering the labor force.