
Job applicants at a career fair in Independence, Ohio, last month.
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
The United States logged yet another month of mediocre job growth in November.
The Labor Department said Friday that the nation’s employers added 120,000 jobs last month, after adding 100,000 jobs in October.
The unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent, after having been mired around 9 percent for most of 2011.
“The unemployment rate has been stuck in the mud all year,” said Andrew Tilton, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs.
November’s jobless rate was the lowest recorded since March 2009. The rate fell partly because more workers got jobs, but also because about 315,000 workers dropped out of the labor force, and the jobless rate counts only people who are actively looking for work.
November’s jobs report reinforced how much President Obama needs additional stimulus, a tidy and fast resolution to the European debt crisis or some other economic miracle to reinvigorate the economy before the 2012 presidential election.
On the issue of government action to stimulate the economy, there has been some movement in Washington toward extending the payroll tax cut, which is currently scheduled to expire at the end of this month. Economists have said that allowing the expiration of the tax cut — which lets more than 160 million mostly middle-class Americans to keep 2 percentage points more of their pay checks — could be a severe drag on both job creation and output growth.
“If isn’t extended, it will have an impact on consumer spending in the first half of next year because it’ll put a big dent in consumer income,” said Conrad DeQuadros, senior economist at RDQ Economics. “To the extent that reduces spending, there will be second-round effects on hiring.”
The other major stimulus program schedule to expire by 2012 is extended unemployment insurance benefits, which allows some jobless workers to continue receiving benefits for as long as 99 weeks. The average duration of unemployment has been near record highs this year, and so ending extended benefits is likely to affect a sizable chunk of the unemployed.
Unemployment benefits are believed to have one of the most stimulative effects on the economy, since recipients of these benefits are likely to spend all of the money they receive quickly and so pump more spending through the economy.
“They say businesses are refusing to look at résumés from the unemployed,” said Esther Perry, 59, of Bedford, Mass., who participated in a recent report on unemployed workers put together from USAction, a liberal coalition. “What do you think my chances are? Once unemployment runs out, I don’t know what I will do.”
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