U.S. Job Growth Gets Back on Track in October With 531,000 Gain

The U.S. labor market got back on track last month with a larger-than-forecast payrolls gain, indicating greater progress filling millions of vacancies as the effects of the delta variant faded.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 531,000 last month after an upwardly revised 312,000 gain in September, a Labor Department report showed Friday. The unemployment rate fell to 4.6% while the labor force participation rate was unchanged.

The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 450,000 payrolls gain and for the jobless rate to fall to 4.7%.

The faster pace of hiring shows that more Americans returned to workplaces as Covid-19 cases declined and employers offered higher wages. Some of the payroll growth may have also come after an estimated 7.5 million people lost federal expanded unemployment benefits on Sept. 6.