Aaron Sojourner Profile picture
Aug 7, 2020 13 tweets 4 min read Read on X
It's #JobsDay.

In Mar+Apr, we lost 22 million jobs in tight lockdown.

In May+June, gained back about 33% of those, putting us at about 10% fewer jobs than Feb. Image
Will today's report show continued recovery, slowing, stall, or reversal? Signals mixed but job change almost certainly slower than last month.
Pay more attention to employment-to-population ratio than unemployment rate.

Margin between employed & not is more meaningful these days than between (no job & searching for job) vs (no job & not searching).

We are below the record of 72 years prior to April Image
Also big positive seasonal adjustment (~+1m). Usually schools have big layoffs this month but they already happened, will make picture brighter than last month's experience.
Added 1.8 million jobs from mid-June to mid-July. Solid but a huge deceleration from 4.8 million the prior month or 2.7 million two months ago.

Means we recovered 42% of the 22.2 jobs lost in Mar+April. Still 12.9 million jobs (8.4%) down from Feb.
Over the last 12 months, we've lost 11.37 million jobs.

Compare that to losses in the Great Recession. Image
Can see the deceleration here.
+1.8 million this month
+3.1 million average over last 3 months Image
The share of adults employed is up 0.5 percentage points to 51.1%. Another deceleration of improvement but progress.

This is historically low. Before April, the share hadn't been that low since July 1955, 66 years ago. Image
The unemployment rate fell 0.9 percentage points to 10.2%, again progress but still awfully high.

We have now spent 4 months above the Great Recession's highest level, 10.0%, where it was for 1 month. Image
BLS describes how education sector layoffs occurred unusually early this year but seasonal adjustment (SA) makes today's report rosier than on-the-ground reality (& made earlier months look worse). Image
+1.8 million top-line estimate of jobs growth = 591K jobs before SA+1.172m SA.

SA turned govt job change from negative to positive. For state & for local.

State & local govt jobs continued to fall but less than in usual years due unusually many layoffs in recent months.
In sum, labor market recovery continuing but slowing and remains very incomplete. We have 8.4% (12.9 million) jobs fewer than in Feb.

More than half of American families report their household that lost employment income since March, per Census #HouseholdPulseSurvey.
Last thing. @BLS_gov does amazing work to create timely, accurate info about America's working families, a huge public good.

They are there for us, even now, & we need to show up for them.

If you are a labor economist or care about workers & employment, join @Friends_of_BLS.

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More from @aaronsojourner

Jun 9, 2023
This paper is SOOOOO interesting. I love it.

They posit 3 types of Americans with different relations to the labor market. Folks in:

- primary enjoy steady work, any job search quick.

- 2ndary struggle to find jobs, move across U, E, N a lot.

- 3iary mostly out.
These bring the Dual Labor Market hypothesis home to the U.S.

Interprets short-panel linked CPS data combining:

- a hidden Markov model of observed transitions by latent type,

- a measurement model uses many rich CPS questions to assign each person type probabilities.
The primary market, estimated to represent 55% of American population, enjoys super-high LFPR/EPOP, super-low UR.

2ndary (14%): in LF 73% of time but unemployed a third of that time.

3riary (32%): out 91% of time. UR intermediate when in.

Heterogeneity that matters. Image
Read 11 tweets
May 21, 2023
Amazon warehouse mgmt uses intensive, opaque monitoring as input to discipline, pay, promotion, & firing decisions.

MN just passed a law requiring employers like them to make such standards, incentives, & data transparent to workers.

Fascinating on a few fronts... Image
No one likes working to unclear standards.

But mgmt often prefers it,⬇️some gaming &⬆️ managers' discretionary power.

Even if mgmt uses clear well-justified rules, if workers don't know them, feel arbitrary.

Mgmt says, trust us. Many workers do not.
thenation.com/article/politi…
In a workplace with new tech-enabled, intensive, high-stakes monitoring, it's interesting to see workers demand & win transparency of rules & of data.

Amazon warehouse workers in MN have actively pushed to improve working conditions for a decade @AwoodMpls. This is latest win.
Read 5 tweets
May 18, 2023
Lower-income Americans often need access to $ NOW!

Speedier payments benefit those most in need.

Instant payments, like @federalreserve’s FedNow coming July, would create billions in consumer value.

🧵my new paper w/the great @ryanmcdevitt
direct.mit.edu/rest/article-a… Image
We measure willingness-to-pay (WTP) for $ today versus $ soon.

Use transaction data from a bank that offers both bank accts (BA) & check-cashing (CC), unusual.

Usually, 2 services offered by different bizs = tough to leverage customer choices to credibly isolate WTP.
@springbankny was 1st new S. Bronx-based bank in 25 years when in 2007 when started as Check Spring Bank. Later I served on & chaired bank’s board.

Aimed to deliver financial services value to S. Bronx community, compete head-to-head with check cashiers.
spring.bank/about-us Image
Read 12 tweets
Mar 28, 2023
Wealthiest 0.1% of Americans saw 5.0% of their wealth disappear from the quarter before the Fed started hiking rates in 2022Q1 to 2022Q4

The next 0.9% saw 7% of their wealth disappear

In contrast, the least-wealthy half of Americans saw their (much smaller) wealth rise 17%
The price of Fed action to fight inflation has so far been paid mostly by wealthier Americans whose assets in stocks, crypto, & elsewhere deflated.

If Fed causes employers to start destroying jobs in the real economy, the price burden will shift dramatically.
This is how it started and the labor market has held up remarkably well. The Fed can break it though.

Hard-landing advocates claim doing so is the only way to bring down inflation.
Read 6 tweets
Jan 29, 2023
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.

Is this under-promising to over-deliver?
reuters.com/world/us/us-la…
Read 8 tweets

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