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Parker Ross

@Econ_Parker

Sep 9

How will recent job growth look after today's Current Employment Statistics (CES) preliminary benchmark revisions?

Glad you asked.

Here's a look at monthly job growth if we include the revised data and carry forward that monthly pace of negative revisions through August.

Sector-level details in the 🧵

Here's a look at job growth over the prior 4 months, with sector-level revisions incorporated.

Here's just August before and after the implied revisions

Again, the revisions only go through March '25.

So, these figures are simply extrapolating forward the negative revisions, which may not be far from plausible given the magnitude of the 2025 revisions were in-line / slightly more severe than the preliminary 2024 revisions.

Read 11 tweets

Parker Ross

@Econ_Parker

Sep 5

Bigly disappointing jobs report this morning...

Where to begin?

How about the fact that the economy outside of health care has been a drag on growth over the past 3 months.

Many more interesting takeaways in the 🧵

Here's the same data, but with the breakdown of health care jobs (grey) vs all other industries.

Shown another way, here's how much healthcare jobs are driving overall private sector service providing job growth...

It's averaged 125% over the past 3 months, meaning the remaining private sector industries are a net drag on growth.

Read 15 tweets

Parker Ross

@Econ_Parker

Sep 4

The July Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reveals the details underlying the recent sharp deceleration in net hiring activity.

It's pretty straightforward: hiring has downshifted and separations have turned higher in recent months.

Clearly, if these recent trends were to continue, net job growth would turn negative in short order.

More details on the underlying trends in the🧵

Let's look under the hood at which regions are driving the recent downshift.

Since net hiring (total hires less separations) peaked in May at 259k on a 3m avg basis, job growth has slowed most in the Midwest (-93k), Northeast (-45k), and West (-40k) with a more modest slowdown in the South (-16k).

Zooming in a bit, we can see that the JOLTS-implied net job growth had turned negative in the Midwest (-21k) and West (-7k) in July, with the Northeast contributing only 11k to the recent 3m avg job growth and the South accounting for the remaining 82k jobs.

Read 11 tweets

Parker Ross

@Econ_Parker

Sep 4

Challenger released its August job cuts report this morning and it showed a 13% y/y increase in layoff announcements.

While I usually provide context to downplay headline figures, in this case it's the opposite...

Last Aug is a tough benchmark, when layoffs were already 81% above the pre-COVID norm, so the fact we're up 13% y/y from that elevated level means we're now 105% above the pre-COVID norm for Aug, up from 98% in July.

Details in the 🧵

On an absolute basis, announced job cuts were ~44k above normal for August, with most of the lift coming from the east (35.2k above normal), followed by the West (17.1k), with the South and Midwest both below their pre-COVID norm, -3.9k and -4.3k, respectively.

On a cumulative basis, announced layoffs have been now surpassed 1m more than the pre-COVID norm since they started surging back in Nov '22.

The West still accounts for the bulk of the excess layoffs (522k), but the East (468k) has nearly caught up due to the DOGE layoffs announced earlier this year.

Read 10 tweets

Parker Ross

@Econ_Parker

Aug 15

July retail sales came in a tad lighter than expected at 0.5% m/m (consensus 0.6%) but June was revised up to 0.9% from 0.6%.

Meanwhile, control group sales (which are a direct input to GDP) beat with a 0.5% gain (cons. 0.4%) and June was also revised up to 0.8% from 0.5% prior.

On the surface: steady and solid consumer momentum.

Under the hood: a rising share of sales growth is being “paid for” by inflation.

Details in the 🧵

My read: although nominal control group growth has remained “solid” in the mid-single digits, real (inflation adjusted) control group growth has cooled notably from robust growth in ’24 (peak of almost 7% q/q saar) to just a 1% quarterly annualized pace in July.

The PCE control-group deflator has firmed considerably over the course of 2025, so prices are doing more of the lifting.

Volumes ≠ what the headline suggests.

The latest PCE control group price index is not included in the retail sales report, so we have to estimate the latest inflation print based on this week’s CPI & PPI reports.

Here's a look at the simple model I use to estimate the PCE Control Group price index, which leverages CPI and PPI price indexes that correspond to Control Group spending categories like appliances, furniture / furnishing, construction materials, consumer electronics, recreational goods.

As I've noted in my recent posts regarding the CPI & PPI reports, prices for many of these goods have accelerated notably in recent months and the model clearly picks up that trend.

Read 14 tweets

Parker Ross

@Econ_Parker

Aug 1

One of the big surprises in today's jobs report was the contraction in government payrolls.

Consensus expected total job growth of 104k, of which 100k would be private jobs - implying growth of 4k for government payrolls.

Instead, the government sector lost -10k jobs, thanks to a -14k decline in Federal workers (non-USPS).

This shouldn't have been a big surprise...

I'll explain quickly in the 🧵

There has been a clear rebound in initial claims by federal employees for unemployment insurance, which surged higher in July.

This coincides with the reference week for the jobs report, so economists should have been forecasting a notable drag from federal layoffs this month.

Why the renewed spike?

On July 8, 2025, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s injunction that had blocked Trump's February Executive Order directing agencies to prepare for reductions-in-force (RIFs) under the DOGE initiative.

The Court did not rule on the underlying legality of the executive order—only that the administration was “likely to succeed” in defending it.

Read 9 tweets

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