Hopeful sign: U.S. adds 80,000 new jobs

The American economy added 80,000 jobs in October, and job growth in the two previous months was much stronger than first thought, an encouraging sign as the nation searches for a way out of the jobs crisis.

The unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent from 9.1 percent, the first time it has fallen since July and the lowest rate since April, the government said Friday.

"Those are pretty good signs," Bank of America Merrill Lynch senior economist Michael Hanson said. "We're hanging in there."

Merely hanging in there might not be good enough to substantially boost Southern Nevada's fortunes.

It's a positive for Las Vegas that unemployment ticked down and jobs grew nationwide, because a stronger national economy bodes well for local tourism, said Brian Gordon, a principal in local research firm Applied Analysis. But October's improvements weren't significant enough by themselves to lift the city's resort corridor.

"The gains are relatively modest, and have not translated into substantial spending on the Las Vegas Strip. Nor are they expected to in the near term, or through the balance of the year," Gordon said. "The fact that jobs numbers were in positive territory is a plus, but we remain well below prerecession job levels nationally."

Nevada won't report its October unemployment numbers until Nov. 21.

MIXED RESULTS

But September brought steep declines in regional jobless levels, as well as some economic expansion.

Local unemployment fell from 14.3 percent in August to 13.6 percent in September. The city's total September employment of 821,000 was up from 816,800 a year earlier, and from 816,300 in August. It was one of just a few upticks in the past several years, Gordon noted.

Still, Gordon said he doesn't expect to see sizable changes in local unemployment or jobs numbers once October's results come out.

Through the end of 2011, Gordon predicts continued gains in tourism and stabilized convention attendance, which should mean steady employment in leisure and hospitality. The "X factor," he said, will be construction and government jobs, and whether cuts continue in those sectors. Local jobless rates will likely fluctuate within a tight range based on how many people enter or leave the labor pool, he said.

Nationally, economists surveyed by FactSet, a financial data provider, had expected a gain of 100,000 jobs. It takes a gain of about 125,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth, more to bring down the unemployment rate.

The private sector added 104,000 jobs for the month.

The overall jobs figure was the smallest in four months. Still, there were smaller, more encouraging signs in the government's monthly snapshot of unemployment, one of the most closely watched economic reports.

The Labor Department said the economy added 102,000 more jobs in August and September than first thought. And the ranks of the long-term unemployed, people out of a job for at least six months, fell sharply, to 5.9 million.

Those signs further ease fears of a new recession, which had loomed over the economy this past summer. Europe is wrestling with a debt crisis, however, and even if it dodges catastrophe, a recession there would be a drag on the U.S. economy.

A DUBIOUS STREAK

The job market turned consistently negative in February 2008. The nation lost jobs for 25 months in a row -- almost 8.8 million of them in all. Since then, the economy has recovered 2.3 million jobs.

The unemployment rate has hovered around 9 percent for more than two years, and the Federal Reserve said this week that it will is not expected to fall significantly through the end of next year.

That means President Barack Obama will almost certainly go before voters next November seeking a second term with the highest unemployment of any sitting president since World War II.

Obama, appearing at the G-20 economic summit in Cannes, France, said the U.S. economy is growing "way too slow." He repeated his call for Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs bill, a mix of tax cuts and spending on roads and rail lines.

"There's no excuse for inaction," Obama said.

The Senate on Thursday defeated the infrastructure portion of Obama's proposal. GOP lawmakers opposed the bill's tax surcharge on the wealthy and the additional spending.

Hiring last month was broad. The professional and business services category, which includes the accounting, engineering, and temporary help industries, added 32,000 jobs. Hotels, restaurants, and entertainment companies added 22,000. Health care added 12,000.

The construction sector cut 20,000 jobs for the month, the most since January. That industry is examined closely because a pickup in the housing market could add force to the economic recovery.

Government, meanwhile, cut 24,000 jobs. That's unusual for an economic recovery, when state, local and federal governments typically hire workers.

Those results roughly match what's happened in Las Vegas in recent months, with professional firms, tourism companies and health care businesses adding positions even as builders and government agencies cut staffers.

The nationwide number of discouraged workers, those who have given up looking for work and are no longer counted as unemployed, fell. And fewer people with part-time jobs were looking for full-time work.

"Overall, while this report is not good enough, several key numbers are now moving in the right direction," High Frequency Economics economist Ian Shepherdson told clients.

The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in July, August and September, its best performance in a year. In this year's first half, the economy expanded at the slowest pace since the Great Recession ended in June 2009.

The stronger economy over the summer was powered by consumer spending, which grew three times as fast as it had this spring. Americans spent more even in the face of fears of a new recession and wild fluctuations in the stock market.

Las Vegas Review-Journal writer Jennifer Robison contributed to this report.