U.S. businesses added 250,000 jobs in October, the Labor Department said on Friday—a blowout number that surpassed Wall Street’s expectation.
The monthly average job creation now stands at about 180,000 for the last three months. That incorporates revised data for September, which saw an unusually low jobs figure thanks to Hurricane Florence.
Wages jumped. Average monthly earnings increased 3.1 percent from the year before, the first time in the current economic expansion that the figure has crossed the 3 percent mark. Other data released this week shows that compensation costs are now rising more quickly. The last time wages grew this quickly was in 2009.
The unemployment rate stayed at 3.7 percent, the lowest it’s been in nearly 50 years.