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Jobs Report May Offer Glimmer Of Good News

The most-anticipated economic news of the week — word about the October unemployment rate and, hopefully, how many jobs were added to payrolls last month — is due at 8:30 a.m. ET.

A month ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the jobless rate in September was 9.1 percent and that 103,000 jobs were added to private and government payrolls.

Now, according to Reuters, the general consensus among economists is that the agency will say there were about 95,000 jobs added to payrolls in October and that the unemployment rate stayed at 9.1 percent.

The wire service says that would mean "employment growth ... may have been strong enough to suggest some economic momentum is building."

Bloomberg News says the economists it surveyed came to the same consensus about what the report will show. It cautions, though, that the news will underscore the "frustratingly slow" nature of the economic recovery.

We'll post about the report as soon as possible after it's released.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.