The economy created 531,000 jobs in October, beating estimates, as the labor market bounced back from its delta variant-induced hiatus in September, the Labor Department reported on Friday.
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, fell to 4.6% from its prior 4.8%.
The number completes a trifecta of better-than-expected reports this week that also saw private firms add 571,000 jobs, according to payroll firm ADP, and first-time claims for unemployment benefits reach a pandemic-era low.
Economists were looking for around 450,000 jobs to be added, compared to the disappointing 194,000 recorded in September. Wages rose at an annual rate of 4.9%.
The leisure and hospitality industry led the gains, with 164,000 jobs followed by professional services at 100,000.
"Although the past month has been turbulent with uncertainty around COVID-19 variants, rising inflation, a disappointing GDP number and the ongoing supply chain crisis, it's encouraging that employment rates are creeping towards normal levels," said Steve Rick, chief economist at CUNA Mutual Group.
The news comes as the Federal Reserve Board prepares to begin unwinding the extraordinary support it has provided to the economy since the pandemic began in March, 2020 and as employers prepare for what they hope will be a robust holiday spending season.
Morning Consult, a data intelligence firm that tracks a variety of economic data points, says that in October job-seekers and workers began to look beyond the pandemic and especially the recent emergence of the delta variant of the coronavirus. Tracking a four-week average of labor participation rates shows improvement from late September to the end of last month.
"This increase in labor force participation indicates that the narrative of the Great Resignation mischaracterizes short-term cyclical movements as longer-term structural changes," economists John Leer, Kayla Brun and Jesse Wheeler wrote Thursday. "While a growing share of employed adults stopped working or even looking for work in the third quarter, the change was not permanent: As uncertainty surrounding the future of work faded in September and October, a growing share of adults responded by looking for work."
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