Job growth has been steadily rising in the United States for the past three months, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ November figures showed particularly strong gains. About 203,000 positions were created, which was higher than anticipated, USA Today reported.
As a result, the unemployment rate decreased from 7.3 percent to 7 percent, which is the lowest it has been in five years.
“The overall strength of the jobs recovery has definitely increased to a somewhat higher gear,” says Pat O’Keefe, director of economic research at CohnReznick told USA Today.
Businesses that have plans to revamp their hiring efforts can expect that job seekers who are underemployed or working on a temporary basis will be submitting their applications to their offices. HR software solutions can help companies manage the influx of traffic and determine which applicants should be invited for an interview.
Hiring managers across many sectors, notably health care, transportation and manufacturing, contributed to November’s healthy numbers. Despite the partial government shutdown in October, about 7,000 government positions opened up.
“It’s sort of uncanny how steady the growth has been,” Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc., told Bloomberg. “The improvement in the job market is sufficient over time that an extraordinary amount of quantitative easing — $85 billion a month, almost $1 trillion a year — isn’t going to be necessary as we go through 2014.”
Another indicator that the U.S. is heading in the right direction is that the rate of underemployed Americans, those who are working in positions that requires less skills than they actually have, dropped from 13.8 percent to 13.2 percent. If the fourth quarter ends strong, human resources departments may need to implement HR software solutions into their hiring process next year.