Expectations:
+200K jobs. If >0, that’d extend longest streak of monthly job creation on record to 93 months. So steady for so long (graph).
Unemployment expected to tick even lower: 3.8%.
Big question: wage growth?
I was honored to serve American people:
@barackobama
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/administration…
@realDonaldTrump
web.archive.org/web/2018050822…
Now I brief u!
Public servants toiled all month surveying abt 200K bizs + individs, crunched into #JobsReport stats. Thanks @BLS_gov!
@ryan_d_nunn @dwschanz @MichaelRStrain
brookings.edu/research/in-or…
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/… (slide 15)
money.cnn.com/2017/03/12/new…
Last month, average hourly earnings up 2.7% over year. Expect acceleration but haven’t seen much, likely due to people still on sidelines & weak labor bargaining power
bls.gov/news.release/e…
Continues longest streak of continuous monthly job growth on record, started Oct 2010.
Longest streak of private-sector job growth too.
Is >> estimate needed to maintain low & stable unemployment rate given demog change=+80K
Both labor force participation rate (LFPR) & employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) decline 0.2%. That's not great.
LFPR at 62.7%. A year ago 62.9%, similar to 3 years ago.
The intensive Q margin is average hours. Not much action here.
Average workweek hours for private sector stayed at 34.5 hrs.
For frontline workers (production & nonsupervisory) stayed at 33.8 hrs for 5th consecutive month.
Long-term unemployment stable over month at 1.3M but down 403K over year.
Americans stuck in part time jobs wanting full time, stable at 4.4M, ⬇️over yr.
Marginally attached stable over year at 1.4M.
Bottom line, all measures show
-weak growth
-slowing growth
-range of disagreement narrow & all close to 0.
wsj.com/articles/white…
Workers have gotten mostly promises & PR so far.
If we are serious about revitalizing wage growth, tackle it directly. Great analysis @hamiltonproj
hamiltonproject.org/papers/revital…
- expansion of public employment in infrastructure & care,
- employment incentives, or
- some form of job guarantee.
Former TreasurySec Robert Rubin & current White House CEA Chair Hassett have advocated for many of these ideas.
nytimes.com/2017/11/08/opi…
@kateandrias @BrishenRogers @rooseveltinst
rooseveltinstitute.org/rebuilding-wor…
Eradicating RTW & protecting "weak" right to invest
thehill.com/opinion/financ…
@BLS_gov does amazing work to create timely, accurate info about America's working families, a huge public good. They are there for us & we need to show up for them.
If you care about workers & employment, follow & join @Friends_of_BLS.