Hiring stalled in November, with businesses adding only 210,000 jobs

Job growth stalled in November, with employers adding a disappointing 210,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That represents a sharp slowdown from October, when companies added more than twice that number of new hires.

Economists had forecast that employers had hired 535,000 workers last month. The unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.6% in October, the Labor Department said on Friday.

Millions of Americans have been slow to return to the job market, with about 4.7 million fewer people in the labor force than prior to the pandemic. Employers are raising wages to attract job candidates, but some workers may still be hesitant to return to work given high COVID-19 rates across much of the nation.