The unemployment rate rose to 3.8%, but not because people lost jobs

 The unemployment rate rose to 3.786% from 3.495% on a bigger 736k increase to the size of the labor force than to the employment level, not because people lost jobs.

The employment level actually made a new high in August 2023, but up a smaller 222k. 

The unemployment rate went up in August because record new high employment in August, 161.484m, is a smaller percentage of a new larger labor force in August, 167.839m than was the case in July: 96.2% in August vs. 96.5% in July = 3.8% and 3.5% unemployed respectively. 

And do not mix the limited Establishment Survey (122,000 businesses and agencies) total nonfarm jobs oranges (156.419m) with the unemployment rate Household Survey (60,000 households) whole universe of jobs apples and try to make them agree. They don't, and never will.

The Establishment Survey went up 187k in August, but the unemployment rate is not derived from that survey. 

 

 

CNN Business is stupid: "Women now hold more jobs than men"

Here's the lede:

Women held slightly more jobs than men in December — the first time that's happened in nearly a decade. 

That's based on the Establishment Survey, which undercounts civilian employment by the millions.

The Household Survey shows 84 million men employed in December 2019, 74.8 million women. Employed women have never outnumbered employed men in the entire post-war history of the data.

Meanwhile benchmark revisions to the quick and dirty monthly Establishment Survey indicate 501,000 jobs have to be SUBTRACTED through March 2019

That is expected to bring down 2018 job creation to roughly 181,000 monthly instead of 223,000.

I say, so what? 223,000 monthly wasn't indicative of a jobs boom anyway.

Jobs numbers under Trump are like Trump Steaks, overcooked.

Story.

Meh: Total nonfarm payrolls increased 164,000 in July 2019

Average to date from November 2016 inclusive is 183,000 per month. Not a boom.

Clinton era average: 243,000 per month for eight straight years.

Reagan boom average: 248,000 per month for six years Nov 1982-Nov 1988.

Headline payrolls in 2019 may be overstating the real numbers by more than 25%

The Myth of the Tight U.S. Labor Market:

Months from now, the Establishment Survey will undergo its annual retrospective benchmark revision, based almost entirely on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages conducted by the Labor Department. ...

The latest QCEW data are available through 2018, but note how much worse the 2018 QCEW data look than the Establishment Survey data, even though the two appear fairly similar in previous years, for which the latter has already undergone the requisite revisions. The Establishment Survey’s nonfarm jobs figures will clearly be revised down as the QCEW data show job growth averaging only 177,000 a month in 2018. That means the Establishment Survey may be overstating the real numbers by more than 25%.

There is no jobs boom but you'd never know it from the headlines

Are all these stories written by twenty-somethings? They are an offense to anyone with a knowledge of history:

"US adds robust 224,000 jobs in June" -- ABC

"Strong hiring in June: 224,000 new jobs, 3.7% unemployment" -- CBS

"Big month for jobs, big headache for Fed Chair Powell" -- NBC

"U.S. adds 224,000 jobs as hiring rebounds in June, calming worries about the economy" -- MarketWatch

"US labour market booms in June" -- BBC

"The US labor market rebounds in June, adding far more jobs than expected" -- Business Insider

"Jobs report smashes expectations" -- AOL 

"Labor market comes roaring back as jobs see 'nice pop', economists say" -- MarketWatch

Meanwhile, the facts.

Trump has yet to put numbers on the board which distinguish payrolls as robust, strong, big, calming, booming, rebounding, smashing or roaring.

For roaring you have to look back to Reagan and Clinton. Trump is not in their league. So far he's not even as good as Obama for putting up big months (granted, over eight years), and is merely one term president Bush 41-league, the best comparison for comparable time in office. It ain't over 'til it's over, but 30 months in Trump has just two big months to his name, that's it, and the clock is ticking on the longest, but nowhere near best, economic expansion in history.

On a net population-adjusted basis there are as of 2018 5.2 million more Americans 16 to 64 years of age not in the labor force who used to be in it since low levels reached for respective age groups in 1989, 1995 and 1997, including one million fewer not in labor force age 25-54 since 1989. There are 2.8 million more 16-24 not in labor force in 2018 than in 1995 on a population adjusted basis, and 3.4 million more age 55-64 since 1997.

5.2 million people actually sitting on the sidelines added to payrolls in a real jobs boom would boost current monthly levels by 108,333 on an average basis over 4 years, in other words, well above 300,000 monthly.

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:

April 2019: 882K dropped out of labor force, labor force contracted 726K, employment level contracted 103K, participation rate fell to 62.8% (the 2016 average), average weekly hours so far in 2019 down 0.4 from 2018 average

Data.

Data.

Data.

Data.

Data.

But other than that it's an economic boom because total nonfarm is up 263K.

Rush Limbaugh doesn't know what he's talking about when he says there are more job openings than workers

Total nonfarm job openings: 7,581,000

A: Unemployment level: 6,235,000

B: Not in labor force want a job now: 5,222,000

C: Not in labor force age 25-54: 22,015,000

A is the official unemployment level. To be counted in it you have to be counted in the labor force.

B is the number of people in addition to the unemployed who are unemployed but aren't counted as such because they are not in the labor force. These are the people unemployed longer than one year who say they still want a job when they are surveyed.

C is all the people of prime working age who aren't in the labor force and aren't counted as unemployed. Some of B are included in this number. This group averaged 21.3 million in both 2006 and 2007, before the shit hit the fan, and got as high as almost 24 million in 2015. It averaged 22.7 million last year. The data goes back only to 1982 but shows that in the 1980s and some of the 1990s that this group shrank during jobs recoveries just as it is shrinking now. There is lots of potential labor here sitting on the sidelines.

In any event, A + B means at least 11.5 million jobless with 7.6 million openings.

Advantage: employers.

P. S. I have seen the very same jobs with the very same companies advertized for years on end. How do they never get filled, hm?

LOL Larry Kudlow: 22,000 new payrolls in February 2019 "fluky", but 54,000 in May 2011 "meager", economy "sputtering", possibly a sign of recession

Obama Owns This Unemployment Report:

In recent weeks, a whole bunch of new economic stats have been pointing to a sputtering economy -- maybe even an inflation-prone, less-than-2-percent-growth recession. Stocks have dropped five straight weeks, as they look toward slower growth, jobs, and profits out to year end. And Friday's jobs report didn't buck these trends.

"Anemic" is the adjective being tossed around the media. According to the Labor Department, nonfarm payrolls increased a meager 54,000 in May, while private payrolls gained only 83,000. A week or two ago, Wall Street expected 200,000-plus new jobs. Didn't happen.

Trump's 20,000 jobs added is the worst performance for a February in nine years

"the nonfarm payrolls count ... was not disrupted by the shutdown"

It's a lie that we need a million legal immigrants a year when the rate of job growth has been slashed by 70%

The Federal Reserve has utterly failed to restore employment by manipulating interest rates

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.

W-2 payroll data for 2017 just out shows huge slowdown to monthly additions from 2016

Monthly additions dropped from 227,000 (revised up 4,000) in 2016 to 160,000 in 2017 (figures rounded to the nearest thousand).

There were a number of other revisions to the data in this series of more minor significance (incorporated).

Total nonfarm December 2017 on December 2016 was up 182,000 monthly. The civilian employment level was up 149,000 monthly.

Trump has created more jobs in his first 22 months than any Republican in the post-war and comes in 4th overall

Sorry Charlie: Jeff Cox of CNBC wildly exaggerates wages under Trump, "the last missing piece of the economic recovery"

Here in "Trump has set economic growth on fire":

Friday brought another round of good news: Nonfarm payrolls rose by a better-than-expected 201,000 and wages, the last missing piece of the economic recovery, increased by 2.9 percent year over year to the highest level since April 2009. That made it the best gain since the recession ended in June 2009. ... Indeed, the economy does seem to be on fire, and it's fairly easy to draw a straight line from Trump's policies to the current trends.

The wage series used by Cox for all workers differs little in August 2018 from the series for the 80% of workers who are production and nonsupervisory, except that the latter goes back much farther than 2006, giving a truer picture of where we are at. And where we are at is slightly better off than under Obama, but that's about it. It's still not as good as under George W. Bush, for crying out loud. And it's certainly not "on fire".

This is not an economic boom for most working people.

Trump beat Hillary in Ohio's 12th District 53% to 42% in 2016, Republicans barely held on to it yesterday

Last October yesterday's result was hardly thinkable:

Map makes Republicans strong favorites to retain Pat Tiberi's 12th Ohio congressional district

Total nonfarm employment has come a long way in Ohio, especially overperforming quite recently in vaulting well past the 5.6 million mark.

You'd think the voters had been more grateful yesterday, but like Hillary energizing Trump supporters by calling them deplorables, Republican Troy Balderson managed to get out the Democrat vote for his opponent by insulting part of his own district, in Franklin County.

All politics is local.

Jan Hatzius is hysterical: Unemployment rate set to move into overheating territory

Quoted here:

"We are still creating a lot more jobs than the long-term trend which we would put at 100,000 (each month), so when you are adding 200,000, that means the unemployment rate is set to move into overheating territory," Hatzius added.

The 62-year trend for total nonfarm (Jan 1939 - Jan 2001) is 138,143 jobs/month. Since 2001 through Jan 2018 we're off that trend by 46%, with a monthly rate of just 74,014 jobs added a month. Go back 18 years from May 2018 to incorporate present-day job-creation and the monthly rate goes up only to 76,597 jobs/month.

For workers, the last 17-18 years have absolutely SUCKED!

Nothing is overheating here except Jan Hatzius.

For him recovering the missing 13 million + jobs since 2001 would be a catastrophe . . . for the profits of Goldman Sachs. 

Brian Wesbury thinks job growth of 2.3 million to 2.4 million is great when we're really just treading water

Here, in "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs":

"[W]e’ve rarely seen a job market this strong. ... Nonfarm payrolls grew 223,000 in May and are up 2.4 million in the past year. Civilian employment, an alternative gauge of jobs that better measures small business start-ups, grew 293,000 in May and is up 2.3 million in the past year."

Where has Brian been? Living under a rock?

Between 1991 and 2000 annual average total nonfarm grew by 2.6 million a year for nine years straight.

How about between 1983 and 1989? Annual average total nonfarm grew then by almost 3 million a year for six years straight.

Payroll growth right now of 2.4 million a year is barely adding 100,000 net new jobs annually with population increasing at a rate of 2.3 million a year.

We have 16.1 million total unemployed as it is.

At this rate it'll take 161 years to put them all back to work.

What that means is the economy has effectively, and permanently, shrunk.