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First up: Monthly growth slowed a bit in August, but the six-month average actually ticked up slightly.
Bigger picture: Hiring has slowed meaningfully from last year, but the durability has been impressive (107-straight months!).
Bigger picture: Hiring has slowed meaningfully from last year, but the durability has been impressive (107-straight months!).
Census hiring added 25k jobs, so private hiring was weaker. No question that job growth has slowed.
August saw strong wage growth. Year-over-year pace has been over 3% for a year now, but hasn't risen further, which is disappointing.
Hours ticked back up in August, which is good. But over the year, slowdown in earnings, hours and job growth means that total earnings growth (important for consumer spending) is trending down.
Hiring has clearly slowed in manufacturing -- 3k jobs added in August, and June/July revised down. But apart from a one-month blip, we have not seen outright job cuts as some predicted given the trade war.
The grim news continues in retail. The sector has cut jobs every month since January. 84k lost jobs in that time.
The drop in oil prices is hitting the energy sector. Oil & gas cos cut jobs for the first time this year in August.
Here's your census impact: Huge surge in federal government hiring (nearly all census). Those jobs are temporary and will be gone in a month or two. (We'll see another, bigger surge next year.)
Maybe not the biggest news in the report, but definitely the most exciting for me: Prime-age (25-54) employment rate hit 80% for the first time since 2008. Extra encouraging because it had stalled out recently.
A somewhat more sophisticated demographic adjustment shows an even bigger surge in the employment rate (and never showed the recent decline).
Similar story on participation: The recent drop among prime-age adults reversed (a good reminder that household survey data is volatile).
The continued improvement in labor force participation is clear evidence that the strong job market is pulling people off the sidelines and giving opportunities to people who lost out early in the recovery. More in my story from yesterday:
nytimes.com/2019/09/05/bus…
nytimes.com/2019/09/05/bus…
The black unemployment rate set a new record low in August. Especially encouraging because there had been a troubling uptick late last year (now fully reversed).
The unemployment rate is now 5.5% for blacks, vs 3.4% for whites. That's the narrowest gap on record (but still huge). See my story with @Nataliekitro on why the gap has been so persistent.
nytimes.com/2018/02/23/bus…
nytimes.com/2018/02/23/bus…
@Nataliekitro The unemployment rate for less educated workers has basically been bumping along lately after falling sharply last year.
@Nataliekitro Alas, July's drop in the number of people working part-time because they couldn't find full-time work reversed in August. Basically flat recently.
(Note: Corrects earlier tweet.)
(Note: Corrects earlier tweet.)
@Nataliekitro We also saw a slight increase in the number of long-term unemployed in August. But trend is clearly in the right direction.
@Nataliekitro With the unemployment rate so low, where are companies finding workers? From outside the labor force.
@Nataliekitro Interesting to see where the winners and losers are in manufacturing recently.
Winners: Electronics, plastics.
Losers: Cars, machinery, oil.
(Charts are over 3 mos.)
Winners: Electronics, plastics.
Losers: Cars, machinery, oil.
(Charts are over 3 mos.)
@Nataliekitro Overall, still more winners than losers, but barely -- the manufacturing "diffusion index" (measure of how many sub-sectors are adding or losing jobs) has been trending down.
@Nataliekitro One last set of charts on census hiring. Clear effect in August, but based on 2010, the *real* impact will come next year. (Effect may be a bit smaller this time around because of technological improvements.)
@Nataliekitro And with that, I leave you. Happy #jobsday everyone! See full coverage from @NelsonSchwartz here: nytimes.com/2019/09/06/bus…
