WASHINGTON -- The economy added 228,000 jobs in November, slightly outpacing analysts' expectations, and unemployment held steady at 4.1 percent, federal economists reported Friday.
Workers' average hourly earnings, meanwhile, grew by 5 cents, up 2.5 percent from this time last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"These are really strong numbers, which is pretty exciting, since this is our first clean read after the volatility associated with the hurricanes," said Josh Wright, chief economist at iCIMS, a provider of hiring software.
Despite the wave of new positions, however, American workers still aren't getting much of a raise, he added.
"Wage growth was the big disappointment," Wright said. "It was lower than we expected. Everyone is scratching their heads."
Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes, an international credit insurance company, said the rising demand for workers across the country lately isn't enough to significantly increase paychecks.
"Workers should get a share in that increase," he said, but "we also have labor coming back in off the sidelines."
Productivity growth remains low, he said, inching up at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent over the past eight years, compared with its historic rate of 2.1 percent from 1974 to 2017, government numbers show.
Plus, the jobs growing most quickly in the United States offer some of the nation's lowest wages: The home health aide industry, paying workers about $22,000 per year, will produce an estimated 425,600 positions by 2026.
President Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill have said they hope to pass sweeping changes to the tax code by the end of December, a move they believe will create more well-paying jobs and supercharge economic growth. Lowering the corporate tax rate, they assert, will inspire companies to invest more on American soil.
But Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, said it's tough to draw a link between tax cuts and economic growth.
"Historically, when you see tax cuts, there's been no strong correlation there," he said. "In my view, if I'm a CEO and I'm seeing tax cuts for my organization, I might give those tax cuts back to shareholders."
Hurricane damage skewed the last two employment reports, with the storms temporarily pushing hundreds of thousands of workers, particularly in the service sector, out of their jobs. They largely flocked back in October, accounting for much of the month's larger-than-usual job growth (261,000).
November's data might be the first report since the storms to escape their impact on the numbers, multiple economists said.
Manufacturing continued to grow last month, adding 31,000 jobs, including: 8,000 in machinery, 7,000 in metal products, 4,000 in computer goods and 4,000 in plastic and rubber wares. That's on top of 24,000 new manufacturing positions created in October after no growth in September.
Health care also showed strong expansion, the government data show. Ambulatory health care services, which includes doctors offices and outpatient recovery centers, saw an increase of 25,000 jobs.
Construction jobs surged by 23,000 in November, thanks in part to the rebuilding efforts in hurricane-devastated parts of Texas and Florida.
"November's jobs report shows steady growth fueled by optimism about the pro-growth, pro-jobs policies being advanced by President Trump's Administration," Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta said in a statement Friday. "Since January, the economy has added 1.7 million jobs."
The Bureau of Labor Statistics economists also revised their reports on jobs growth in September and October, part of a standard practice as they get more information from businesses.
Earlier reports slightly underestimated growth in September and overestimated growth in October, they found, and the two changes basically canceled each other out.
The U.S. economy is in its eighth year of expansion, one of the longest in history, and analysts expect job growth next year to slow only slightly from this year's solid pace of about 175,000 new jobs added on average every month.
That is down from the 187,000 average gains per month in 2016, but still a healthy rate of growth that, if it continues, likely will pull more people into the labor force and push down the unemployment rate even further below what economists regard as full employment, or the natural rate of unemployment.
"I don't see any red flags on the horizon," said Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomic Advisers by IHS Markit.
If there is a downside, he said, stock values could be flattening as they are "a little rich" and could feel more pressure from rising wages and slowing profit margins.
What's more, he wondered how long the economy would keep expanding when the labor market was increasingly operating beyond what many consider to be above its long-term sustainable level.
"It's unusual for the U.S. economy to undershoot the natural rate of unemployment for very long without triggering a recession," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by the Los Angeles Times.
A Section on 12/09/2017