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Economy

Unemployment Declined In November

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

The nation’s headline unemployment number declined in November, from 10.2% to 10%.  Nonfarm payroll jobs declined by 11,000, with the average decline over the past three months being 135,000.  Job loses were primarily in construction, manufacturing, and information services.  Jobs were added in the areas of temporary help and health services.  A measure over unemployment that includes individuals that have stopped looking for work and those who have taken part time work in lieu of full time work, referred to as U-6, declined from 17.5% to 17.2%.

Chart 1: Unemployment Rate, October 2007 through November 2009

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Chart 2: Month over month change in nonfarm payroll, October 2007 through November 2009

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After a big jump in unemployment in October, the November numbers will be heartening to investors.  S&P futures and the dollar have both posted gains since the release of the data.

Garrett W. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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