Recent labor market data has continued to show solid improvement. We expect the trend to continue in November with 170,000 in nonfarm payroll growth, a slight deceleration from the 176,000 average over the prior three months. We expect 165,000 in private payroll growth, with a modest 5,000 expansion in government payrolls.
We expect the labor force participation rate to remain at 62.8% and the unemployment rate to also remain unchanged at 4.9%. We expect a softer 0.2% mom gain in average hourly earnings after the strong 0.4% mom pop last month, leaving the year-over-year rate at 2.8%.
This shows continued improvement in wage growth, but still a less-thanhealthy 3%-4% pace of growth. Remember that the strong gain in average hourly earnings last month was concentrated in three categories: mining, utilities and information technology. We think that there is propensity for a modest reversal given the magnitude of the increase in all three. There are some risks of a weaker print and/or a downward revision to September wage growth. We expect average weekly hours to remain unchanged at 34.4.
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