The number of new US jobs rose at the sharpest rate in seven months in October, the US government reported this afternoon. The improvement was helped by a surge in construction activity as hurricane-hit areas in the Southeast were rebuilt.
A surprisingly strong 337,000 jobs were added to payrolls last month - twice the 169,000 figure that Wall Street economists had forecast. But the Labor Department said the unemployment rate edged up to 5.5% from 5.4% in September as more people joined the labour market.
New hiring in October was more than twice as strong as the upwardly revised 139,000 jobs that were created in September. The data pointing to revival in the labour market comes days before Federal Reserve policy-makers are expected to nudge US interest rates up for a fourth time this year, by a quarter percentage point, to lift the federal funds rate to 2%.
Kathleen Utgoff, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, noted that a 71,000 addition in construction jobs - the biggest since March 2000 - 'reflected rebuilding and clean-up activity in the Southeast following the four hurricanes that struck the US in August and September'.
