Three days after voters expressed their discontent with the state of the economy, the government on Friday reported strong signs of improvement, estimating that employers added 214,000 jobs in October, while the official jobless rate dropped for the second month in a row to 5.8 percent.
The increase puts the average monthly employment gain for the past six months at 235,000 — an indication, analysts said, that the economy’s progress after years of meager growth was on the upswing.
A range of other job measures all improved, including a huge increase in the number of people reporting in a separate survey by the Labor Department that they found a job last month. At the same time, the government revised the figures for the two previous months, adding 31,000 more jobs to the numbers previously reported for August and September.
DRUDGE RETORT 