Jobless Rate Down to 7% in November : Matches Best Mark Recorded During Reagan Presidency

The nation’s unemployment rate fell one-tenth of a percentage point to 7% in November, the Labor Department reported today, matching the lowest rate of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

That left 8.1 million Americans still out of work.

Payroll employment rose 180,000 in November, and the U.S. economy has now created 10 million new jobs in the three years of recovery since the depths of the last recession.

“This . . . increase in employment exceeds the three-year job creation record from any recession low in history, topping the average of prior expansions by almost 4 million jobs,” said Labor Secretary William E. Brock III.

The jobless rate started the year at 7.4% and was stuck at 7.3% from February through July before falling to 7% in August, the low point of the nearly five years of the Reagan Administration. It rose to 7.1% in September.

Manufacturing Jobs Up

Employment in the manufacturing sector, considered by analysts one of the keys to continued economic growth, rose 30,000 in November. It was only the third increase in factory job growth in the last 11 months.

Despite the improvement in the jobless rate, the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the decline is relatively insignificant, and noted that unemployment is only slightly below the level of a year ago, 7.1%.

Retail stores did not do as much pre-Christmas hiring as expected, as employment in retail trade actually declined by 37,000.

The cautious hiring by retailers and other employers may have reflected uncertainty due to a record-high debt burden being carried by American consumers, who cut purchases sharply in October to send personal spending into its biggest tailspin in 25 years.

Joblessness rose last month among blacks by 0.9% to 15.9%.

Teen-age joblessness fell 1.7% to 18.4%. But black male teen-age unemployment rose 5% to 46.1%.

There were strong job gains in the service-producing sector of the economy, including 121,000 new jobs in business and health services.

No ‘Factory Job Loss’

On the manufacturing side, “I think it is important to note . . . that no further factory job loss has occurred in the last two months,” Janet L. Norwood, commissioner of labor statistics, told a congressional Joint Economic Committee hearing today.

Factory job losses so far this year have totaled about 300,000.

Nearly 80% of the new jobs that have been created since the end of the last recession are in the service sector.

The Labor Department reported these jobless rates among various population groups:

--Adult men, 6%, unchanged from October.

--Adult women, 6.4%, unchanged.

--Teen-agers, 18.4%, down 1.7% from 20.1%.

--Whites, 5.9%, down 0.2% from 6.1%.

--Latinos, 10.7%, down 0.6% from 11.3%.