Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 215,000 in November, and the unemployment rate, at 5.0 percent, was unchanged over the month.

The November employment increase follows little job growth in September (+17,000) and October (+44,000), as revised. The September weakness was clearly associated with the devastating direct effects of Hurricane Katrina, and it is possible that October‚s job growth was held down somewhat by the indirect effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. To put the November increase in perspective, from January through August of this year, payroll employment growth averaged 196,000 per month.

Last month we released our first set of data from a special series of questions added to the household survey to identify and gather information from survey respondents who had evacuated from their homes because of Hurricane Katrina. As we emphasized last month, the estimates are not repre- sentative of all evacuees, but only those who were in- terviewed through normal household survey procedures. We do not gather information on those evacuees who remain outside the scope of the survey, such as those currently living in hotels or shelters.

The November update of these data indicates that there were nearly 900,000 persons age 16 and over who evacuated from where they were living in August due to Hurricane Katrina. Half of these persons had returned to the home from which they had evacuated by November; the other half had not returned.

Of the 900,000 evacuees identified in the November survey, a little more than half were in the labor force with an unemployment rate of 20.5 percent. Consistent with the October estimates, the November data show that the jobless rate for those who had not returned home (27.8 percent) was well above the rate for those who had returned to their August place of residence (12.5 percent).

In summary, employment rose in November (+215,000), following 2 months when job growth was held down by the direct and indirect effects of the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast. The unemployment rate held at 5.0 percent.