11:19 a.m. ET, December 8, 2023
The return of workers who were on strike helped boost numbers
Striking United Auto Workers (UAW) march in front of the Stellantis Mopar facility on September 26, in Ontario, California.
Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
The US economy notched another solid month of job growth, with an added lift from actors and autoworkers coming off the picket lines.
Additionally, the resolution in the Screen Actors Guild strike against Hollywood studios resulted in 17,200 jobs added in the motion picture and sound recording industries.
Taking into account those one-time gains, the underlying rate of job growth is likely around 160,000 jobs per month, which aligns with the 2019 average, wrote Julia Pollak, senior economist at ZipRecruiter.
A month earlier, those effects swung the other way.
“Some of the weakness last month may have been illusory, just due to the strikes,” Pollak told CNN earlier this week in an interview.
October’s employment report included 33,200 jobs counted as lost in the motor vehicles and parts industry. BLS attributed those declines to strike activity: The agency’s strike report for that month counted 25,300 Ford, GM and Stellantis workers on strike.
Read More:Stocks notch a sixth straight week of gains after November jobs data
2023-12-08 21:19:00