Payrolls rose in 29 US states in November

Payrolls increased in 29 states in November, while the jobless rate declined in 43, a sign the labor market is recovering across much of the US. New York led the nation with a 29,500 gain in jobs, followed by Texas with 20,800, figures from the Labor Department showed on Tusday in Washington. The biggest drop in unemployment was in Michigan, where the jobless rate fell 0.8 percentage point to 9.8 per cent.

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"We're seeing a modest recovery in hiring across much of the country," Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina, said before the report. "There are a few hot spots where activity is stronger."

The improvement comes as lawmakers in Congress remained deadlocked over extending a payroll tax cut and long-term unemployment benefits by an end-of-year deadline.

US employers added 120,000 workers in November and the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 8.6 percent, the lowest since March 2009, the Labor Department reported Dec. 2.

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The unemployment rates in Alabama, Minnesota, South Carolina and Utah dropped by 0.6 a percentage point each in November, marking the second-biggest declines statistically. Nevada's jobless rate dropped to 13 per cent from 13.4 per cent in October, still leaving it as the highest in the US California followed at 11.3 percent.

North Dakota had the lowest unemployment at 3.4 percent.

The economy expanded at a 2 percent pace in the third quarter, revised government data showed last month. That following an average 0.9 percent rate of growth in the first half of the year.

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The biggest payroll losses last month were in Wisconsin, where employment dropped by 14,600, and Minnesota, which showed a loss of 13,700 jobs.

The jobless rate in Michigan has dropped 1.6 percentage points over the past 12 months, which may in part reflect a rebound in auto making.

Ford Motor Co. (F) has agreed to create 12,000 jobs, invest $6.2 billion in factory upgrades and give each of its 40,600 U.S. workers as much as $10,000 in bonus and profit-sharing payments this year.

State and local employment data are derived independently from the national statistics, which are typically released on the first Friday of every month. The state figures are subject to larger sampling errors because they come from smaller surveys, making the national figures more reliable, according to the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.