The November unemployment rate jumped to 4.6%, a four-year high, according to the Trump administration’s delayed jobs report released on Tuesday. It is the highest unemployment rate since September 2021. Employers added 64,000 jobs in November, after a sharp loss of 105,000 jobs in October, a month for which the administration did not release a report.
In what is being seen as a clear sign that hiring is slowing, the October loss “marked the third time in six months that payrolls saw a net negative level,” according to CNBC.
The New York Times called the jump in the unemployment rate “a warning sign for the economy.”
Experts are expressing concern.
“There have been almost no job gains since April,” warned Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal. She added that the “US would have LOST JOBS in the past 6 months if it weren’t for healthcare.”
Long concluded, “The US economy is in a hiring recession.”
Professor of economics and frequent cable news guest Justin Wolfers has repeatedly warned about possible stagflation.
On Tuesday, he called private sector hiring “weak,” and said it “may have stalled totally.”
“All told, the headline numbers suggest VIRTUALLY NO EMPLOYMENT GROWTH since April (‘Liberation day”),” Wolfers wrote, referring to the day President Donald Trump’s tariffs began.
Wolfers also offered some concerning news: “Are we in a recession? Perhaps. Maybe. Hard to tell.”
“I just realized…the unemployment rate rising to 4.6% has taken us back to February 2017…the first month of Trump’s first term,” noted Martha Gimbel, a former senior advisor at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
“The unemployment rate for Black Americans rose to 8.3% in November, the highest level since 2021 and a 2.1 percentage point increase from the start of this year,” noted Joey Politano, who writes about economics at Apricitas Economics.
Kevin Gordon of the Schwab Center for Financial Research summed up Tuesday’s report: “The simplicity of today is that the unemployment rate continues to move higher.”
