New evidence of labor-market weakening from Bick & Blandin's quasi-CPS.
Share of working-age adults employed fell an estimated 1.8 percentage points between June & July #JobsReport ref. weeks.
Caveat: the series diverged from the official one in May but tracked in June.
Finds continued decline in the working-age unemployment rate, but improvement greatly slowed from the prior month: -0.5 pp to mid-July versus -4.7 pp to June.
Signals total hours down
Among working-age Americans who were working in February, they estimate that a THIRD had lower labor market earnings last week than in Feb, while 13% had higher earnings.
Two-thirds of income loss came from losing jobs; one-third from reduced wages or hours among still-employed.
10% of America's abt 155 million employees belong to a union.
+1 percentage point a year requires +1.55 million net members if employment flat.
In 2022, union membership rose 273K, 6X smaller.
Estimated +273K from @BLS_gov worker survey. Reflects net hiring by union employers, priv (+193K) + public (+80K) sector, & new organizing inside & outside NLRB.
Abt 52K private sector workers voted to newly unionize in 2022, eyeballing @KevinReuning's NLRB data. 30X smaller.
@BLS_gov@KevinReuning The AFL-CIO's strategy aims to organize 1 million workers over 10 yrs, +100K/yr pace.
That's either 37% of the 2022 pace if it includes all change or less than 2X 2022's pace if newly unionized only.