OK, a few technical snafus later, time for some #jobsday charts! Thread:
First off, the headline: Wow. +266k jobs, +41k net revisions, all coming after 9+ years of steady job growth. It's worth pausing to celebrate that. 
The end of the GM strike added close to 50k jobs in November (and subtracted the same number in October). The hiring and then firing of temporary Census workers adds further noise. Read through that, and we've had solid, steady gains in recent months.
Note that these charts do *not* account for the ~500k downward revision to job growth that we expect to become official in January. That will make 2018/early 2019 look weaker. (And QCEW data suggests there are more downward revisions to come.)
nytimes.com/2019/08/21/bus…
nytimes.com/2019/08/21/bus…
The effect of the GM strike is very evident in the manufacturing data -- see the wild swing in October/November. Read through that, and the sector is basically stalled right now -- no longer adding jobs, but not slashing them either.
The manufacturing diffusion index -- which measures the share of sub-sectors adding/cutting jobs -- shows the toll of the trade war. It rebounded this month (thanks to the end of the GM strike), but 6-mo avg fell below 50 for first time since just after Trump took office.
Retail hiring was weak in November. But September/October were revised up substantially, suggesting the sector is in better shape than it appeared.
Wage growth remains a puzzle. For all workers, hourly earnings up 3.1% from a year earlier -- not bad, but not rising (maybe even falling). But production & nonsupervisory wage growth still heading up (a slight slowdown in Nov. notwithstanding).
Significantly, growth in total aggregate earnings (hourly earnings * weekly hours * jobs) has stabilized and may even be picking back up. That's important to consumer spending (and thus the overall economy).
Turning to the household side... Household survey wasn't nearly as strong as the establishment survey. But importantly, it didn't give back the big gains from November.
The prime-age (25-54) employment and participation rates both held at their post-recession highs.
Adjusting for demographic shifts, the participation rate is now back to its prerecession level. And the employment rate is getting close to its 2000-era peak, which is something many of us doubted we'd ever see.
The gender split in participation is really striking, though. Participation among prime-age women is well above its prerecession level. For men, the rate has barely rebounded.
Note that (contrary to what I often hear), the employment rebound has *not* been about part-time jobs. Job growth in the recovery has been almost all full-time, and the full-time employment rate has actually had a stronger rebound than the overall employment rate.
That said, there are still 4.3 million Americans working part-time because they can't find full-time work. That's higher than we'd expect given how strong the labor market is by other measures.
The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5%, back to a 50-year low. That's particularly significant because as @Claudia_Sahm has shown, a rising unemployment rate is a strong signal that a recession is underway.
nytimes.com/2019/07/28/bus…
nytimes.com/2019/07/28/bus…
The government's broader measure of un/under-employment (including people who have stopped looking or are working part-time involuntarily) also fell, down to a roughly 20-year low.
Important, though, not to lose sight of the fact that 1.2 million Americans have been out of work for more than six months. And the long-term unemployment rate is still much higher than during similar periods of low overall unemployment in the past.
cc @marthagimbel
cc @marthagimbel
