Hiring difficulties may be on the horizon for U.S. firms amid a weak labor supply, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s latest jobs report. The bureau’s October jobs report, released Nov. 5 showed employers added over half a million jobs in October, beating market expectations and painting a more positive picture of labor market recovery compared to the previous month. However, the labor force participation rate—a measure of how many people work or are actively looking for jobs—was unchanged at 61.6 percent in October and has remained within narrow range of 61.4 percent to 61.7 percent since June 2020. The participation rate is 1.7 percent lower than in February 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, for workers aged 25 to 54, the labor force participation rate has been gradually ticking up to 81.7 percent in October from 81.6 percent in September, which, while above the historic pandemic lows, is still far below pre-pandemic levels, …