Ben Casselman Profile picture
May 2, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Was tied up this morning, but #JOLTS looks interesting enough that it's worth a belated/abridged charts thread. I'm sure lots of others have already hit many of these points (looking at you, @nick_bunker, @DanielBZhao) but I can't resist.
Labor demand is clearly cooling. Job openings fell for the third straight month. Still high by historical standards, but now clearly falling (and quite rapidly). Image
The ratio of openings to unemployed workers hasn't been falling as steadily. But it's down to its lowest level since November 2021. Image
Quits aren't falling off a cliff, but they're also trending steadily down, suggesting workers are becoming more cautious about switching jobs. Image
The quits rate is now within two standard deviations of its prepandemic average (and only modestly above their prepandemic high). Openings still extremely high by historical standards, but falling rapidly. Image
Layoffs are still low by historical standards, but they're rising much more significantly than a few months ago. Hard to see in the total time series because of the pandemic spike, but clearer if you look at a truncated graph. ImageImage

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More from @bencasselman

Nov 4
So this was an interesting finding from @NateSilver538, but one I found odd because @BLS_gov publishes CPI for regions (and for some metro areas) but not for states. So I dug into it a bit, and there's less here than meets the eye.
Nate's data is coming from this tracker from the @JECRepublicans. They don't have a state-level inflation estimate either, though. They just use BLS's estimate of regional inflation and apply it to an estimate of household spending when Biden took office.
jec.senate.gov/public/index.c…
You can see this if you hover over their map (or download their data). States in the same region all have the same cumulative rates of inflation. But they differ in the amount of inflation experienced in dollar terms because some states have higher avg household incomes.
Read 14 tweets
Aug 28
I hate that @ellawinthrop is leaving us, but I'm so glad I got to work with her on her last piece for @nytimesbusiness. She's the best, most collaborative, most creative visual journalist I've ever worked with. A thread with a few of my favorite Ben-and-Ella collabs:
1. This iconic chart showing the scale of the pandemic job losses:
nytimes.com/interactive/20…
2. This piece digging deep into the American Time Use Survey to look at how the pandemic changed our lives:
nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Read 6 tweets
Jul 11
Good news on inflation! U.S. consumer prices FELL 0.1 percent in June, and were up just 3 percent from a year earlier. "Core" prices, stripping out volatile food and fuel, were up 0.1 percent from May and 3.3 percent from last June. Data: …Live coverage: bls.gov/news.release/c…
nytimes.com/live/2024/07/1…
This is the second straight month where there has been effectively no inflation on a month-to-month basis. Prices were flat in May, and down in June.
If you take a longer view here: At 3% year-over-year, inflation is no longer outside historical norms (though it is still higher than immediately prepandemic). And over the past three months, rents have risen at an annual rate of ***just 1.1%.***
Image
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Read 7 tweets
Jul 2
Job openings ticked up in May (but only because April was revised down). Layoffs edged up. Quits basically flat. All consistent with a gradually slowing, but not collapsing, job market. #JOLTS
Full data: bls.gov/news.release/j…
There were 8.1 million job openings on the last day of May. That's up from 7.9 million in April, revised down from the 8.1m originally reported.
Larger story here is that openings are clearly falling quickly, even if they're still high in absolute terms. #JOLTS Image
There were 1.2 job openings for every unemployed worker in May. That's more or less where things stood immediately before the pandemic (when the labor market was widely viewed as strong but not overheated). Image
Read 7 tweets
Jan 25
The U.S. economy slowed in the final three months of the year, but only because the Q3 number was so strong -- the 3.3% growth rate in Q4 was well above expectations and certainly offered no hints of a brewing recession. (Belated charts thread)
Image
This is not a case where the volatile components of G.D.P. made a weak quarter look strong, as sometimes happens. Measures of underlying demand were also very strong.
Image
Image
For all the predictions of a recession, G.D.P. growth actually *accelerated* in 2023, and topped the prepandemic average growth rate as well. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jan 3
Job openings, quits and layoffs all edged down slightly in November. Consistent with a gradually cooling labor market, but definitely no sign things are falling off a cliff. #JOLTS
Data: bls.gov/news.release/j…
There were 8.8 million job openings on the last day of November. That's down a touch from October, but only because October was revised up. Big picture: Openings are trending down (and quite quickly, at that), but are still high by historical standards. #JOLTS Image
The number of job openings per unemployed worker actually ticked up in November (because unemployment fell), but ignore the noise. The labor market is becoming more balanced, though the ratio is (again) high relative to the prepandemic period. Image
Read 9 tweets

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