2 November 2012 Last updated at 08:51 ET
US economy adds 171,000 new jobs
October's jobs report is particularly important ahead of Tuesday's presidential election The US economy added 171,000 new jobs in October, which was much more than had been expected.
But the official figures from the Labor Department showed that the unemployment rate still rose to 7.9%, having fallen to 7.8% in September, as more workers resumed the search for jobs.
Only people who are currently looking for a job count as unemployed.
Unemployment is one of the key issues ahead of Tuesday's presidential election.
The figures were the last major set of economic data scheduled before the election and the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has made the state of the jobs market one of the central planks of his campaign.
The number of jobs created in the previous two months was revised upwards, with an extra 34,000 jobs added in September and 50,000 added in August.
Despite the new jobs, Barack Obama will still go to the polls with the highest rate of unemployment of any president seeking re-election since Franklin D Roosevelt.
The Labor Department said in its release that Hurricane Sandy, which hit the East Coast of the US on 29 October, had had "no discernable effect" on the employment data.
The number of involuntary part-time workers, who would prefer to be working full-time, fell 269,000 to 8.3 million, having risen by 582,000 in September.
Kathy Jones from Charles Schwab said they were good numbers, but warned that: "We're way short of where we need to be to bring down the unemployment rate to where the Federal Reserve would like to see, closer to 6% than 8%."
"We would need to see twice as many jobs as we're seeing, but the direction has improved."
Source : bbc[dot]co[dot]uk
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