Hiring surged in October despite GM strike

Employers added a surprisingly strong 128,000 jobs in October, shrugging off a 40-day strike at General Motors that temporarily reduced payrolls for the month.

The U.S. unemployment rate ticked up to 3.6%, the Labor Department announced Friday.

The government also increased its initial estimates for hiring in August and September, showing that, on average, the economy has added 176,000 jobs every month for the past three months. That’s more than enough to keep up with the growth of the labor force while pulling some discouraged workers off the sidelines.

“[T]he worst might be over for the economic slowdown,” Sal Guatieri, senior economist at Capital Markets Economic, said in a note.

Average hourly earnings last month rose 3% from a year ago, a decent clip, though slower than earlier in 2019.

“Certainly we’d hope to see wage growth pick up more because of how tight the labor market is. It’s been a huge mystery for the duration of the expansion about why wage growth has been so slow,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor.

This is a developing story.