There's a lot of clucking out there about multiple job holding

 Multiple job holding seems high at nearly 8.4 million, here.

But as a percent of the employed it is not, currently at 5.2%. In the go-go 1990s it was above 6%.

Multiple job holding generally is a sign of opportunity and good times, not economic stress and bad times. Obviously there is always a percentage of the workforce which can't find full-time work and works two part-time jobs. They now number almost 2 million, a very small part of the employment universe, which is near all-time highs in the range of 161 million.

Full time jobs as a percentage of population now average 48.3% through August 2021

 Full time as a percentage of population rose to 49.18 in August after peaking in July, as is typical, at 49.28.

The measure ebbs after summer and flows in the spring, mirrored by a peak oscillation in usually part-time employment in the winter, which is a much smaller part of the population, historically averaging 27+ million in the years before the latest catastrophe.

The 48.3% average to date in 2021 is one full point ahead of the average for 2020 at 47.3%, but remains far off the 2019 average at 50.4%, which itself hardly represented a return to what was normal before the Great Financial Crisis.

Full time work never recovered after GFC I, which exposed the hollowed out character of the US economy after decades of out-sourcing, off-shoring, and mass low-wage immigration.

 

In past hits to full-time employment in the early 1990s, after 2000 and 2007, part-time usually soared, but it tanked in 2020 right along with full-time

 

Full-time jobs fall 605,000 in November, 50.388% of population employed full-time on average through November in 2019

Part-time jumped 483,000.

The 2019 average percentage of the population working full-time remains unchanged from October, despite the 605,000 drop in November.

If 52.2% still had full-time jobs as in 2006 and 2007, there would be 4.7 million more working full-time in 2019 than are, on average.

We live in an economy which has shrunk.

The rising share of workers not making the average wage

Note that under Bill Clinton, many important things happened which were detrimental to the middle class:

Bill Clinton raised taxes shortly after taking office in 1993 even though he had run promising not to.

Part-time employment soared as a result. 

Borrowing from home equity lines also soared as the middle class struggled to maintain its lifestyle in the wake of the recent recession, reducing "owners' equity in real estate" dramatically.

And, of course, the percentage of Americans not making the raw average wage ballooned by 2.6 points under Clinton, and by 4.1 points total by 2018.  

The difference between a payroll population not making the raw average wage in 2018 at 63.3% vs. 67.4% is 6.87 million.

That's roughly equivalent to the number of homes lost to foreclosure in the housing debacle, which bottomed in the spring of 2012. The share not making the average wage first hit 67% that same year.

This history since 1990 is a picture of the middle class under pressure and actually shrinking.

The only good thing that can be said about it is that the trend is flat since 2015, not worsening.

The trend for growth of part-time work since 1968 has been much stronger than for full-time, saving business the cost of paying benefits such as paid holidays, sick time, retirement and health insurance

PART-TIME

FULL-TIME

Note the huge jumps in the percentage working part-time due to the Clinton tax increases after his election in 1992 and after the Great Recession in 2008.

Full-time has still not recovered to the two decade experience pre-Great Recession.

The fools at CNBC write the dumbest headlines about jobs

"Strong job growth is back: Payrolls jump in June well above expectations"

The Civilian Employment Level is cyclical. It routinely bottoms in January and peaks in the summer with the cycle of seasonal part-time and full-time, the latter peaking in the summer months when millions of new graduates from high school and college get their first jobs.

So it is completely natural to have higher expectations for good jobs numbers in the summer, especially after four months of poorer performance than 224,000 Total Nonfarm Payrolls.

But if we were really having a jobs boom, "strong job growth", it would look like this, not like Trump's record so far with just two months out of thirty above 300,000:

Kellyanne Conway baldly lies on The Rush Limbaugh Show, claims over 7 million jobs created

You don't lose control of the US House after creating over 7 million jobs in just over two years.

These people are blind, but the voters are not.

There is NO measure which comes even close to over 7 million new jobs.

Total nonfarm payrolls (Establishment Survey) between Nov 2016 and Jan 2019 are up 5.3 million, seasonally adjusted, 1.7 million not seasonally adjusted.

Civilian employment (Household Survey) is up 4.5 million seasonally adjusted, 2.6 million not seasonally adjusted.

The sum of usually full time and usually part time (Household Survey) is up net 4.5 million seasonally adjusted, 2.6 million not seasonally adjusted (mirrors civilian employment level).

The employment-population ratio is up from 59.8% to 60.7%, an increase of 4.6 million jobs from 152.2 million to 156.8 million.

And 78% of these new jobs have gone to minorities, not to the white majority.

Kellyanne Conway Calls to Preview the President’s Speech

CONWAY: . . . He’s going to talk about the booming economy, and it is the Trump economy. Over seven million jobs created, wages are up, unemployment is down, small business formation is going well. People are just… They’re back to work. We’re a country that works.

The BS headline about jobs the open-borders fanatics keep repeating: Job openings outnumber available workers

The unemployment level is currently 6.06 million. The part-time who want a full-time job currently number 4.87 million. The number not-in-the-labor-force-want-a-job-now is 5.18 million in May 2018. Add 'em all up and there's 16.11 million people right here in America for the 6.55 million job openings. The employers don't fill the jobs because they can, otherwise the situation wouldn't persist.

Meanwhile 78 million gig workers work side-hustles to make ends meet.

Not enough workers? Like hell there aren't.

Sorry, Trump didn't create 2.4 million jobs "since his election", and even if he did, that sucks

Not even the fact-checkers seem to want to get this right. Is the whole country taking stupid pills?

Total nonfarm, not seasonally adjusted, stood at 146.393 million in November 2016. In December 2017 the level was 148.346 million, an increase of 1.95 million.

Seasonally adjusted, the increase went from 145.170 million to 147.380 million, an increase of 2.21 million.

The former figure is 150,000 per month (13 months), the latter 170,000 per month. Meanwhile Trump is claiming 184,462 per month.

These are terrible numbers, including Trump's, which however also appear to be cooked on a bonfire.

In a booming economy, monthly increases well above 200,000 are indicated. That's what we got under Reagan and Clinton, but not now, not by a long shot.

Turn away from these Establishment Survey numbers and consider the Household Survey figures and the picture looks even worse.

Not seasonally adjusted the sum of usually full-time and usually part-time is up just 1.216 million in 13 months. This has been seasonally adjusted up to barely 1.9 million. We're talking 93,500 per month to 146,000 per month, quite the spread. Not exactly confidence inspiring numbers.

The truth is that employment gains have gone soft in 2017 compared with 2016, down about 15%. In the 13 months up to November 2016, total nonfarm jobs seasonally adjusted increased at a monthly pace of not quite 200,000 which was nearly 18% better than under Trump so far. 

Trump better hope hiring picks up soon, or this charade will quickly be seen for what it is, all hat and no saddle.

Still waiting for the boom.

The immediate effect of NAFTA passage in late 1993 was pushing 2.3 million more Americans into part-time employment by the end of June 1994

ADP had private payrolls up 263,000 earlier this week, but we only get 98,000 from the BLS today

When the expected BLS increase to total nonfarm was 180,000.

What's up with that?!

Long story short: Forget ADP, and employment gains have slowed by 15% in the last year. 

ADP is designed to try to predict what the BLS is going to say, and is known to fail at this. It is questioned why ADP even bothers. I agree.

A government measure from the Household Survey, the sum of usually full-time and usually part-time, not seasonally adjusted, is up only 1.89 million (157,500 per month) year over year in March 2017.

Total nonfarm, on the other hand, from the Establishment Survey, is up 2.135 million, not seasonally adjusted (178,000 per month) year over year.

That last number, 178,000 per month, is what the BLS also says is the current 3-month average in March 2017.

Compare that to March 2016 when the 3-month average was 209,000.

There's the truth.

The soft number of 98,000 in the headline today contributed to the climb-down in the 3-month average this month. It will be revised next month, probably up because it's so low. But it's the revisions down for the previous two months totaling 38,000 which are the clue to look farther back.   

The absolute number is not important because we can't be certain about it. It is only an estimate anyway, not an actual count. But we can be certain that the long-term behavior of the estimates shows an employment slow down of about 15% year over year.

It was well underway before Trump even got elected.

You can see that in full-time employment gains. Measured in March year over year, full-time gains peaked in March 2015 at almost 3 million additions. Gains have steadily fallen since, to 2.5 million in March 2016 and just 2 million now in March 2017.

And the bottom line there is we've added about only 4.7 million full-time jobs since March 2008 on net.

After NINE years.

The country remains mired in shrunken conditions from which it has not escaped.

In a real recovery, the 10 million full-time jobs lost in 2009 and 2010 would have been fully replaced by 2013 at the latest. It took until 2015, and the momentum immediately started to recede.

Newsflash for those of you who think Trump's talk of an inherited mess is silly

You obviously had full-time work under Obama. We didn't for almost eight years, and not even part-time work for five. Our best money-saving work years are now all lost.

You obviously enjoyed the stock market recovery and even continued to invest, but we had to sell assets to preserve them and liquidate some just to survive.

Now we're stuck with non-income producing investments thanks to Ben and Janet and a stock market which is too expensive for a sane person to buy.

You obviously refinanced your mortgage at rock bottom rates, but we couldn't without that full-time job. And now that we can, it's hardly worth the expense thanks to Elizabeth Warren and her CFPB.

Meanwhile the gutters leak, the driveway needs paving, and the snowblower needs an overhaul.

You obviously drive on fresh wheels, but our cars are 10 and 20 years old in 2017. We'll probably keep them another ten because our mechanic is an honest Christian.

You obviously feel entitled to vacations and take them regularly, but we haven't had a real one since the 1990s.

You obviously enjoy dining out at restaurants, but we shop for bargains and cook at home almost every night.

You obviously consume healthcare like you do jet fuel, but we only go to a doctor, dentist, ENT or ophthalmologist when we absolutely have to because it's all out of pocket because of ObamaCare.

At Christmas we mostly give each other necessities, like new shirts socks and underwear, just so we have plenty of things to open to make the holiday seem more festive than it is.

We don't have television service because it's a costly waste of time, but for entertainment we enjoy listenting to Donald Trump on the radio dressing you down.

He's the best thing that's happened to us in years.

Steve Liesman tries to be charitable to Trump on 96 million wanting a job, but comes up short 5.9m

From the story here:

Trump said that there "are 96 million wanting a job and they can't get (one). You know that story. The real number. That's the real number."

It is unfortunately very far from the real number. There are in fact 96 million Americans age 16 and older who are not in the labor force. Of this, just 5.4 million, or 91 million fewer than the number cited by Trump, say they want a job. The rest are retired, sick, disabled, running their households or going to school. (This number is 256,000 fewer than last year and 1.7 million fewer than the all-time high for the series in 2013.)

... A more charitable explanation for Trump would expand the number to include those people who are working part time because they can't find full-time work, all the unemployed and those marginally attached to the workforce. This broader measure of slack in the economy, known as the U6, is about 14.7 million. It's the lowest since May 2008, and has come down by nearly 12 million since the worst of the job market effects of the financial crisis in 2010. And remember, many of these folks have work, though it's part time.

This isn't charitable enough because Liesman never adds the 5.4 million to the 14.7 million. He must know you can't do this because that would involve double counting. The monthly Employment Situation Summary always includes the "marginally attached" in the expanded figures, people who are not in the labor force, but they are a subset of the 5.4 million.

But this can easily be remedied, and one wonders why the BLS doesn't do this.

Here's the data, with links.

Not in the labor force, not seasonally adjusted, is 95.8 million.

Not in the labor force, want a job now, not seasonally adjusted, is 5.45 million (peak was 7.2 million in May 2013).

The unemployed represent another 7.5 million from the monthly Employment Situation Summary. Those who work part-time but would rather have full-time represent 5.6 million more in the same report. But both of those groups are in the labor force, a total of 13.1 million.

To those 13.1 million simply add the 5.4 million from not in the labor force above and you get 18.5 million unemployed.

To get that expressed as a percentage you have to add the 5.4 million in to the civilian labor force because they want a job now, here, because the unemployment rate is the unemployed as a percentage of the labor force, which by the addition is now larger, 164.4 million.

So that yields a real unemployment rate of 11.3%. The U6RATE comes up quite short of this, at 9.2%. Meanwhile most people think everything's great because the headline rate is only 4.7% (7.5 million unemployed as a percentage of 159.6 million in the labor force).

There are not 96 million unemployed as Trump laughably says, but neither are there the 12.6 million Liesman ends up with, either.

18.5 million are unemployed in December 2016, at a rate of 11.3%.

And Piers Morgan reminds the world Meryl Streep once gave a standing ovation to the child rapist Roman Polanski

It's like finding Nazis in the closet.

Here.

Compared to October 2007, there are just 2.6 million more full-time jobs in October 2016

You talkin' to me?

In October 2007 there were 122 million employed full-time, in October 2016 124.6 million.

Meanwhile part-time jobs are up 3 million over the period, from 24.7 million to 27.7 million.

That's an extra 5.6 million jobs total in 9 years, that's it. Population is up 21 million.

Way to go, Brownie! 

Are millions in America experiencing economic crisis?

If you lost your full-time middle class job in 2008 at the age of 51 and now by the age of 59 have only been able to find part-time work paying you one fifth of that, well yeah, it's a crisis.

Or maybe it's more like being slowly strangled to death because you saved enough before that to last this long, because you wouldn't still be alive to read this had you not. It's the real life version of "the continuing crisis" that used to be mocked in a monthly column at The American Spectator.

Hence our rage. Hence Trump. 

But otherwise, no, everything's just fine, sweetie.

The issue is briefly discussed here and here.

Obama's horrible, awful full-time jobs record

The numbers are out this morning and they are not pretty.

Full-time jobs for July 2015 registered at 123.142 million in the report today, not seasonally adjusted. The previous high for the measure was set, wait for it, way back in July 2007 at 123.219 million.

That means full-time jobs still have not recovered to the peak level set eight years ago. Examine the record of recessions since 1969 and you will see that full-time jobs always have bounced back to pre-recession levels after two to three years ... until now.

In fact there are today still 77,000 FEWER full-time jobs than there were eight summers ago. That means it will likely take until next summer to surmount the 2007 peak. That'll make it nine years, versus two to three normally.

Yes, there are 2.4 million more jobs today than there were eight years ago, but they are all part-time: 26.6 million part-time now vs. 24.1 million then, for an increase of 2.5 million part-time. Subtract the decline in full-time and you arrive at just 2.4 million more net jobs in eight years while the population has grown by 19 million.

Obama crows about the all the jobs he's created, but only out of the depths of their decline which he oversaw and did nothing to stop. Full-time jobs fell in a panic by 6 million in the three months from his election in 2008 to his inauguration in 2009, and by another 5 million in the next year.

Arguably all those jobs went away out of fear over what Obama would do to the economy, which after six full years of his maladministration has grown at its slowest pace in the post-war and 26% worse than for the same period under George W. Bush, a surprising outcome considering that there was nowhere to go but up once the economy had crashed.

If the Obama rate of GDP growth from the first six years of his tenure is sustained through the end of it, Obama GDP will underperform the previously worst record of George W. Bush by over 20%. And more than likely, full-time jobs will continue to suffer as a result.  

Doug Short makes our point: Part-time surged because of the recession, not because of ObamaCare

Here:

"With regard to Obamacare and part-time employment, the surge in part-time employment was triggered by the recession, not by the Affordable Care Act, as the next chart clearly illustrates."

---------------------------------------------------------

After studying the issue since 2010 we first began to express doubts about the meme that ObamaCare part-timed the country in July of 2013, here.

In August 2013 here we realized a part-timing trend, to be real, would have to show up in the hours data and wasn't.

By September 2013 here we were calling the meme a myth, and here we identified the part-time statistics as incapable of capturing such a trend due to the high bar set by the government definition of part-time as less than 35 hours worked.

In October 2013 here we blamed the part-time explosion on the recession.

In February 2014 we noted here that The Atlantic had finally caught on.

Mish started to catch on in September 2014, here.

Now Doug Short joins the party.

Hooray.

I still want my Pulitzer.

Are full-time jobs up 427,000 or down 47,000 in December?

Not-seasonally-adjusted full-time is in red.

The latest Employment Situation Report for December 2014 shows full-time jobs either up 427,000 in the seasonally-adjusted measure, or down 47,000 in the not-seasonally-adjusted measure, both from the respective November levels.

Which to believe?

Since 1968 the not-seasonally-adjusted count of full-time jobs between November and December has gone down 33 times vs. 13 times going up, with one year flat (1992). This is consistent with the historical record of cyclicality in full-time vs. part-time.

Full-time typically peaks in the summers and troughs in the winters while part-time does the opposite. Full-time tends to peak in the summers with work related to seasonal and student employment, while part-time tends to peak in the winters with holiday additions to the workforce.  Therefore it is consistent with this pattern to expect part-time jobs to be peaking right now (they already did last month) and full-time to be near its lowest point in the current cycle, which usually happens in January, for which measure we will have to wait another month.

So full-time down 47,000 is obviously more in keeping with the generally expected pattern than the seasonally-adjusted figure.

It is noteworthy, however, how low that negative full-time figure is relative to the recent past and to the historical average.

The 30-year average of the subtractions to full-time between November and December (excluding the outlier years in 2007, 2008 and 2009 when employers panicked and fired 1.4 million on average, 1.7 million on average in 2008 and 2009 alone) is a subtraction of nearly 244,000 full-time jobs.  Add to that that we haven't had this low a subtraction since the year 2000 between November and December and you get the feeling that things are indeed improving.

Unfortunately what we don't see yet is the kind of addition to the full-time rolls which occurs rarely at this time of year and typically after recessions. The last time we saw this in the November-December data was in 2005, 2004 and 2003 when we had three back to back years of full-time gains averaging 290,000, well above the average gain for the 13 up years of 145,000.

What we'd like to see right now, but don't, is a similar strong recovery of full-time after a recession like we've seen in the past.

For example, after the recession of 1970, full-time recovered between November and December of both 1971 and 1972, adding an average of 105,000 full-time jobs for those two months. Similarly after the recession of 1974, full-time jobs recovered for three straight years, averaging an addition of 195,000 full-time jobs between November and December of 1975, 1976 and 1977. And of course after the recession of 2001 we've already pointed out the three years of November-December additions to full-time averaging 290,000, double the average.

Even the long drought of additions to full-time jobs at this time of year which began in 1978 and lasted through 1992 was broken for two back-to-back years in 1986 and 1987 when an average of 66,000 full-time jobs were added between November and December. This was the rather delayed recovery of full-time after the recession of 1982, which cast a long shadow over employment much like the most recent recession has done.

As things stand, the current brutal drought of full-time additions at this time of year now stands at a record nine years, one more than the previous record posted between 1978 and 1985. The average subtraction to full-time then between November and December was 202,000. Now it has soared to 586,000 on average, almost 3x worse.

That's the scale of the trouble we've been in, and so far there's been no sign of leadership out of this mess, except that the pain right now is well-below its average level for this time of the year.

The simple fact remains that full-time is still far below its 2007 peak, no matter how you measure it.