The measure to two decimal points has been 50% or better only in June and July this year.
If 54.67% worked full time as in July 2000, we would have 147.3 million working full time today instead of 133.4 million, a difference of 13.9 million.
Whatcha all doin' out there?
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| 10-year view |
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| View since 1968 |
Just one percentage point of current civilian population is 2.69 million full time jobs.
The trend is worryingly down for the middle class, which needs full-time jobs in order to buy homes.
The percent working full time in Jun 2023 almost but not quite beat the high under Trump of 50.98% in the summer of 2019, but that was 16 months ago.
The Jan 2024 low was lower than the Jan 2023 low, too.
NOT GOOD.
Better save your pennies.
Revisions to total nonfarm subtracted 112,000 jobs for August and September, too.
Six years and four months went by: Jan 2008-May 2014.
And economic confidence actually declined from -11 in 2012 to -10 in 2014 when it did!
It's one of the craziest things in US political history, comparable to FDR getting re-elected throughout the Great Depression, which his economic experimentation only made worse.
By October 2012, 72% said the effects of the Great Recession were still the most important problem, compared to 43% today in October 2024, but it didn't matter that Obama wasn't solving it. He beat Romney anyway.
Is this one of those sometimes?
The same phenomenon may be happening today, but in reverse.
Harris stands to lose despite economic indicators which are chugging along in her favor, or at least not falling apart, to which those 43% seem oblivious.
Civilian employment in July and September 2024 remains near the November 2023 peak. Core inflation is still too high at 2.7%, but it isn't in the 5s anymore like it was for four straight quarters. Congress has thrown the book at the economy since 2Q2020, with nominal GDP growing at an astounding 9.84% compound annual rate because of pandemic spending. That's been a double-edged sword, however, exploding the national debt, inflation, and interest rates.
But economic confidence is Obama-like negative, and has been since it crashed during the pandemic in April 2020 to -32 from its highest level in 20 years under Trump just two months before, in February 2020 at +41.
Trump didn't shut down the economy in 2020, but governors sure did. It was a stark demonstration of just how quickly the wrong leadership can make everything go to hell in a hand basket overnight. The people today aren't wrong to lack confidence.
Ominously for incumbent VP Harris, Gallup thinks 2024 is most analogous to 1992, when Americans booted the incumbent Bush 41 even though the recession had ended more than a year before in 1991.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- More than half of Americans (52%) say they and
their family are worse off today than they were four years ago, while
39% say they are better off and 8% volunteer that they are about the
same. The 2024 response is most similar to 1992 among presidential
election years in which Gallup has asked the question. ...
With a majority of Americans feeling they are not better off than four years ago, economic confidence remaining low, and less than half of Americans saying now is a good time to find a quality job, the economy will be an important consideration at the ballot box this year. As inflation persists and economic concerns dominate voters' minds, the upcoming election may hinge on which candidate can best address these pressing issues.
Annual full year averages:
Bad news.
Full time as a percent of population:
Jan-Aug 8-month average
She was asked an ignorant question.
Why would the Commerce Secretary have something timely to say about employment revisions released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Labor Department?
It's not her area. I wouldn't expect her to know anything about it, and if I had a brain I wouldn't bother asking her.
Commerce and Labor are two separate cabinet level departments and have been since 1913.
I don't expect the Commerce Secretary to have the latest labor information anymore than I expect the Labor Secretary to be able to respond to the latest GDP report produced by the BEA at the Commerce Dept.
But all the ignorami on the right, but I repeat myself, are up in arms over this. It's embarrassing.
What's really going on here is outrage over the size of the revision, which is the largest since 2009.
Republicans want to say Biden and Harris have been lying about the jobs numbers for a year to make themselves look better.
That's a crock. The initial benchmark revisions occur every year around this time, and their size should be no surprise since the Employment Situation Summary every month contains revisions upon revisions upon revisions of prior months. This happens all the time, and if you know you know that this year the numbers have been particularly susceptible of large revisions, criticism, and expressed suspicions from the FOMC members on down.
But total nonfarm payrolls have always been this way. They are quick and dirty on any day. I gave up following them in favor of other measures precisely because it involves securing jello on a galley plate in high seas, and I have better things to do.
Full time employment, measured with other data, around 50% of population under Joe Biden hasn't been great, and it hasn't been awful either. In my arrogant opinion, following total nonfarm and its endless stream of revisions is a fool's errand.
Even more foolish to get upset about it when plenty of other indicators show that employment up until this summer has been "secularly tight", as one economist likes to put it. Continued claims for unemployment have been steady as she goes since late 2021.
The slight recent elevation in these claims numbers is consistent with a softening of employment, which I have noted elsewhere in regard to full time jobs.
The bloom is off the rose it seems, but the preliminary total nonfarm benchmark revision down 819,000 is a problem with that model, not a sign of a sudden problem with employment.
The percentage working full time in the US rose to 50.26 in July from 50.03 in June and now averages 49.63 for the first seven months of 2024. That's down from 50.06 in the first seven months of 2022, and down from 50.20 in 2023.
Not a good sign.
53% working full time today would mean 8 million more people working full time than do.
Full time jobs are the indispensable key to homeownership.
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| 53% worked full time in 2000 |
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| 49% worked full time in 2024 |
The June level finally made it to 50.03% after six consecutive months below 50%, but the first half of 2024 averages a level now comparable to 1H2018, at 49.5%.
The total number of full time workers itself is down 1.36% in the first half, which is alarming, as in 2008 alarming. (I try to avoid comparisons to 2020 because it was a pandemic-induced anomaly.)
It's on the skids.
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| Jun 2024 |
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| 1H2024 |
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| 1H2018 |
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| down 1.36% in the first half of 2024 |
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| down 1.55% in the first half of 2008 |
XX Should we have the Dubuque job losses here too - bunch them all together, at least on first mention. And can we do them in chronological order - May is before March. Also assuming this first Oct one is 2023. And/or a little fact box on them, which we could also get made up ona little graphic of Iowa showing Factory location and town, population, jobs lost (and jobs left). Might be good to summarise that way. But can do it a fact box first and then decide on map graphic.
I'm sure the company would respond that the 2021 strike was the greed.
There's plenty of greed to go around, though, obviously.
The layoffs come after 10,000 unionized John Deere workers went on strike for five weeks in October 2021.
The strikes were among the most prominent during 'Striketober', where thousands of workers from Nabisco, Kellogg's, McDonald's and others walked out for weeks or even months to protest low pay in the wake soaring company profits.
Striking John Deere employees won a 10 percent raise for hourly earners, increased retirement benefits and the maintaining of the health insurance program that workers don't have to pay premiums for.
According to the CDC, obesity is most severe among those of late middle-age, so if you can prevent it before then you are more likely to escape it later:
The prevalence of severe obesity was highest among adults aged 40–59 compared with other age groups.
Peak Baby Boom turned 40 in 1997.
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| Americans worked 32.61 hours per week on average in 1979 and 31.57 hours in 2022 |
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| All countries in 2016 with 30% of population or more obese |
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| 60% of the US population was working in both 1979 and 2022 |
Native born employment is up 0.97 million in 5 years in May 2024, foreign born employment up 3.21 million.
Full time as a percentage of civilian population appears to have stalled in May 2024 at 49.73.
Jan-May average 49.43, lowest since 2021.
Level is 2.46 million down from Jun 2023 peak.
Compare full year averages in the chart below.
Full time peaks in the summer.
“Between last fall and January,” Ohanian wrote, “California fast-food restaurants cut about 9,500 jobs, representing a 1.3% change from September 2023.” By comparison, overall employment in California during that period fell just 0.2%.
Michael Ojeda, a Pizza Hut driver for eight years in Ontario, Calif., received notice in December that his last day would be in February, according to a letter from his former employer. Pizza Hut franchisee Southern California Pizza offered $400 in severance if he stayed through February, but Ojeda, who said he made hundreds of dollars a week in wages and tips as a delivery driver, went on unemployment instead.
“Pizza Hut was my career for nearly a decade and with little to no notice it was taken away,” said Ojeda, 29, who previously supported his mother and partner on his Pizza Hut delivery wages.
Southern California Pizza didn’t respond to requests for comment. Pizza Hut said it was aware of some of its California franchisees changing their delivery services.
-- The Wall Street Journal reported.
