The BLS employment report shows the official unemployment rate ticked down 0.1 percentage point to 7.5%, and the current population survey statistics are a mixed bag of strange. More people were employed, yet the number of people stuck in part-time jobs continues to increase. The labor participation rate stayed at the same May 1979 record low. U-6, a broader measure of unemployment, ticked up 0.1 percentage point to 13.9%.
The BLS employment report shows the official unemployment rate ticked down 0.1 percentage point to 7.6%, but not because people gained employment. Instead the unemployment rate dropped due to less people participating in the labor market. The labor participation rate just hit a record low, not seen since May 1979 when many segments of the population was still quite discriminated against in the workforce. One cannot just blame retiring baby boomers for low labor participation rates This article overviews and graphs the statistics from the Current Population Survey of the employment report.
The BLS employment report shows the official unemployment rate ticked down 0.2 percentage points to 7.7%. While many cheer this report as a sign of recovery, the actual details are fairly ho hum. This article overviews and graphs the statistics from the Current Population Survey of the employment report and the below graph shows how far off we are from 2008. Don't let some fool you into thinking the job crisis is all over, it's not, not by a long shot.
For months now, the words which describe the jobs crisis are little change. It is like the United States is stuck in time when it comes to the never ending dire unemployment statistics.
The BLS employment report shows a 7.8% unemployment rate for December. November was revised up from a 7.7% to 7.8% unemployment rate, but due to a change in the BLS annual seasonal adjustment revisions. This article overviews the statistics from the Current Population Survey of the employment report and the words to describe December are little change.
The BLS employment report shows the unemployment rate ticked down by 0.2 percentage points to 7.7%. The reason for the unemployment rate decrease is less people participated in the labor force in November. Superstorm Sandy had little effect on the monthly employment figures.
The BLS employment report shows the unemployment rate ticked up by 0.1 percentage points to 7.9%. The reason for this up-tick is more people participated in the labor force in October. We love economic eye candy at The Economic Populist and this overview graphs many of the statistics from the Current Population Survey of the employment report.
It's like someone pulled the unemployment rate out of a Star Trek transporter, as if America entered a time warp machine and we moved to another dimension through a worm hole. A 0.3 percentage point drop to 7.8% makes no sense when there were only 114,000 jobs added. Captain, can the unemployment rate be right and we really did defy the laws of statistics?
We want to point to something which might in part explain what happened this month with the household survey statistics. That is how long someone holds a job. We don't have monthly statistics on job tenure, yet it could very well be that finally, people are working longer at a job. The never ending Schindler's List attitude towards U.S. workers may have abated. The U.S. has disposable worker syndrome, where people are laid off and fired for no damn good reason at all. It's a fact of the American work life while one has a job one week, there is no guarantee one will have a job the next.
To wit, let's look at another obscure BLS statistic, labor force status flows. This is the number of people flowing from being in the labor force, out of the labor force, employed and unemployed on a monthly basis. Below is a graph of the monthly changes of people who moved into employment from already having a job, not being counted at all, or being part of the official unemployed since 2006.
The July employment report is a little schizoid in that one employment survey showed a decline of 195,000 employed people while the other, the actual payrolls reported by businesses, showed an increase of 163,000 jobs. Below is the employment levels from the CPS survey.
The June 2012 BLS unemployment report is another abysmal jobs report. Total nonfarm payroll jobs gained were only 80,000. May's payrolls were revised up, from 69,000 to 77,000. April job gains were revised down, again, from 77,000 to only 68,000. The below graph shows the monthly change in nonfarm payrolls employment.
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