US reopens apace
There will likely be plenty of teeth-gnashing over this result given everything else that's going on (election, COVID, other), but the US economy added back another +638,000 jobs in October, blitzing market expectations.
The 3-month average gain was very solid at +934,000.
The unemployment rate plunged again from 7.9 per cent to just 6.9 per cent.
Participation was also 0.3ppt higher at 61.7 per cent, which is frankly a wildly impressive result in the prevailing circumstances.
The underemployment rate also dropped sharply further to just 12.1 per cent, to be 10.7ppt lower from the recent spike.
To date around 12.2 million job have been added over the past six months, meaning that 54 per cent of the jobs lost have been recovered so far.
The US unemployment rate will likely be heading back to 5 per cent in no time as the reopenings continue.
To a certain extent the above gains may represent the return of furloughed workers, so the next 12 million of job gains will take much longer, to restore the full time jobs lost.
