Implications:  The job market was hot in October, with plenty of good news to go around.  Nonfarm payrolls rose 165,000, beating the forecast from every Economics Group on Bloomberg.  In addition, payrolls were revised up by 84,000 for prior months, bringing the net gain to 249,000.  Civilian employment, an alternative measure of jobs that includes small-business start-ups, rose 463,000 in October, while the labor force (people who are working or looking for work) gained 421,000.  This helped push the headline unemployment rate down a tick to 4.1% from 4.2%, but it was really a rounding issue, with the precise rate barely budging to 4.141% from a prior 4.175%. More good news: average hourly earnings increased 0.4% in October, which outpaced consensus expectations for inflation for the month.  Meanwhile, wages are up 3.1% from a year ago, which is lagging consumer price inflation but could help the Federal Reserve justify not raising short-term interest rates as much as the market now expects.  In the past year, private payrolls are up 79,000 per month, defying fears of an AI-related job apocalypse, with manufacturing and construction combined up 16,000 in October and up 196,000 so far this year.  By contrast, government jobs are down 58,000 in the past year and -225,000 since January 2025.  In other recent news, new claims for jobless benefits declined 6,000 last week to 189,000.  The four-week moving average is now 189,000, the lowest since 1969.  Continuing claims rose 23,000 but remain low at 1.718 million.  Also, productivity (output per hour worked) in the nonfarm business sector increased at a 3.6% annual rate in Q3 and is up 2.1% from a year ago.  Unit labor costs (how much workers are paid per unit of output) declined at a 0.7% rate in Q3 while still up 2.4% from a year ago.  The drop in Q3 doesn’t mean workers’ earnings are outright falling; they just didn’t rise in Q3 as fast as production.

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