The U.S. Labor Department is out with what appears to be a stellar unemployment report for November. The good news is that the payrolls were not too far above whisper numbers after a strong ADP report lifted the bias already. This likely will not kill quantitative easing, at least not immediately.

Some 203,000 nonfarm payrolls were added, versus a consensus estimate of 180,000 from Bloomberg. We had seen that unofficial estimates were lifted to 200,000 or even 205,000, based on prior data this week. October’s nonfarm payrolls were revised slightly lower to 200,000 from a preliminary number of 204,000.

Unemployment fell to a post-recession low of 7.0%, versus the 7.2% consensus estimate from Bloomberg.

Private sector payrolls were up by 196,000 in November, versus the Bloomberg consensus of 173,000. One other boost is that October’s report was revised up to 214,000 from 212,000.

Average hourly earnings came in at a gain of 0.2%, as expected. The average work week also came in as expected at 34.5 hours.

So we are dealing with a situation where good news is being treated as good news by the stock market because the numbers did not post blowout results? S&P futures were up about seven points and DJIA futures are up more than 50 points in early trading.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.