Don Lee
L.A. Times
November 8, 2013
The American job market showed a burst of life in October as employers added a healthy 204,000 jobs over the month, far exceeding analysts’ expectations that had been lowered in part by the partial federal government shutdown.
The Labor Department said Friday, however, that the unemployment rate last month edged up to 7.3% from a five-year low of 7.2% in September. Officials said there was an unusually large drop in the so-called labor force, those working or actively looking for jobs. The jobless-figure calculations were complicated by the federal shutdown that had furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
The payroll job-growth data, which are based on a separate survey of employers as opposed to households, are considered more reliable and were not affected by the 16-day government shutdown, officials said.
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