Welcome to the News Hour. The U.S. labor market is showing further signs of cooling as the latest

jobs report shows unemployment rising to 4.6 percent. That's the highest level in the last four years.

There was some good news as payrolls climbed by 64,000 new jobs last month, better than forecast.

But the report also showed a net loss of 105,000 jobs in

October. That marks the third time that the economy has shed jobs in the last six months.

And the biggest losses have been felt at the federal level amid mass firings, affecting

nearly 168,000 positions over the last two months. The delayed report was due to the six-week government shutdown.

For analysis, we're joined now by David Wessel, Director at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Thanks for coming in.

Good to see you.

So the unemployment rate, as Omna said, is now at 4.6%.

Is that a meaningful sign of labor market weakening or is this just normal

volatility? I think it's a meaningful sign that the labor market is weakening. There's more than the

usual uncertainty this time. I know people are always saying one month doesn't matter because

the government couldn't do the usual collecting of data surveying people during the shutdown, the government shutdown.

But we started the year with unemployment at 4%. And now it's at 4.6. So that's a sign that the

labor market is weakening. And you pointed our team to this chart that shows the unemployment

rate over the last three years, rising steadily. So in

2023, it was at 3.4% as the economy recovered from the pandemic, then was steady at 4.1

in late 2024. Now it's climbed back to levels we haven't seen since 2021. So how do those rates

compare in terms of job quality, labor force participation, under employment?

Well, we know that labor force participation was up a little bit in the last report.

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