US govt announces millions of jobs for Pakistanis

NEW YORK: This is good news for the Pakistanis who wish to go to the US, as despite the announcement of millions of jobs and new employment opportunities, the unemployment rate rose from 4.3% to 4.4% in September.

The country added 119,000 new jobs, outperforming expectations, according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The global news agency reported that this report was supposed to be released on October 3 but had been delayed because of the government shutdown. According to the latest data, although jobs were increasing before the shutdown, the overall labor market remained weak.

According to the report, the most significant number of jobs was created in healthcare, restaurants and food services, and social assistance sectors, whereas manufacturing lost 6,000 jobs.

This is the same sector that the Trump administration had highlighted as a key part of its economic policies. In the same way, the transport and warehousing sector recorded a shortfall of 25,300 jobs.

Remarkably, despite millions of new job opportunities, the unemployment rate climbed from 4.3% to 4.4% in September.

This represented an addition of 450,000 people in the labor force. With wage growth easing amidst slack in the labor market, it marked yet another sign of economic weakness.

Without official statistics, the data available from private institutions indicated an alarming situation.

In recent weeks, the companies Amazon, General Motors, IBM, Microsoft, and Paramount, among others, have announced layoffs of thousands of employees.

Recently, Verizon also announced the layoff of 13,000 employees. In October, close to 39,000 people got termination notices. The number of job cuts of this magnitude was last seen in May, or previously only during economic crises.