Thread by @aaronsojourner

Happy #JobsDay. Hope you’re staying healthy. #HappyHanukkah.

At 8:30 am ET @BLS_gov delivers the most-important signals abt how economy is changing.

Forecasts’ center:

+573K jobs
4.5% unemployment rate, down 0.1 percentage point (pp)

Americans have gained more income & enjoy higher levels of wealth than ever before.

We want to buy. Consumer and labor demand is high.

https://twitter.com/aaronsojourner/status/1466513107417804802

Biggest question in the economy: how quickly can we raise supply? Bring more labor & capital to production & boost productivity.

Success means more consumption & lower prices. COVID health risks at home & abroad remain the big obstacle, making work riskier.

CDC recommends COVID vaccination for working-age Americans + booster if 7+ months past getting fully vaccinated. How's that going?

Roughly a third in each group:
- not yet fully vaccinated,
- need booster, &
- following recommendation.

#Vax. #Boost. #MaskUp. #VirusVsUs.

210K jobs gained last month (mid-Oct to mid-Nov).

Upward revisions continue, with +82K jobs in revisions of prior 2 months.

Any single month's estimate is noisy.

The pandemic wiped out 10 years of jobs gains in 2 months, putting us back to the bottom of the Great Recession. Growth in mid-2020, stall in late-2020, recovery through 2021.

Still 3.9 million below the pre-pandemic level.

We're 8.2 million jobs below the pre-pandemic trend.

Economy added 5.8 million jobs over 12 months to Nov 2021, much stronger growth than any recent year.

But estimated job growth appears to be decelerating. Most-recent months slower.

Unemployment rate took a big step down, 0.4 pp to 4.2 percent.

And that happened in the context of ...

The labor force participation rate edged up 0.2 pp to 61.8%.

The employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) jumped 0.4 pp to 59.2%

These come from survey of households (HH), whereas jobs # comes from biz survey. Don't always agree. Noise in any month but very good news here.

The share of prime age (25-54 years old) Americans employed provides an important measure of core labor market strength, omitting people on the fringes of work.

It took an even bigger jump, +0.5 pp to 78.8%.

Every education group remains below Feb 2020 employment shares, especially Americans with less formal education.

For the first time, a slightly higher share of Asian Americans are employed now than in Feb 2020.

Employment rates for Black and Hispanic women remains the furthest off their pre-pandemic levels.

That’s the extensive quantity (Q) margin. Intensive Q margin = average hours.

Average workweek hours for private sector ticks up 0.1 to 34.8 hours

Instead of adding staff, employers working staff longer hours.

Part of how US producing pre-pandemic output with fewer jobs.

Americans stuck in part time but prefer full time = 4.29 million, down a bit this month, basically at pre-pandemic levels.

3.6 million more Americans are out of the labor force & say they don't want a job compared to 2 years ago.

Fewer young people are in that category.

Older Americans (55+) account for 90% of rise. Baby Boomers accelerated their retirements. Some will come back, but only some.

BLS estimates 4.7 million fewer Americans employed than pre-pandemic, so this movement of Boomers accounts for most of that.

Today's report includes data only through mid-November, pre-Omicron. How relevant is it for today?

At least for the labor market, there's no evidence at this point of rising layoffs in real-time data.

https://twitter.com/aaronsojourner/status/1466757936148066304

In sum,

- continued labor market improvement. Signals of great strengthening in unemployment, EPOP & LFPR estimates but of less strengthening in payrolls.

- most important issue: how to increase supply to meet demand? Improve public health & job quality (faster!).

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 & we need to show up for them.
If you are a labor economist or care about workers & employment, follow & join @Friends_of_BLS.

A good way to think about how to reconcile the mixed signals between sources and over time.

https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1466775461212663810?s=20