Worst BLS in 2 Years 11 months

Inside the BLS Employment Situation Report

This is my monthly look inside the BLS Employment Situation Report. There are two BLS Surveys: the Establishment and the Household. Establishment surveys about 141,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 486,000 individual worksites. It is taken each month during the week which includes the 12th of the month. Household is a survey of 60,000 households taken each month during the week which includes the 12th of the month.

Each item below is suffixed with (H) if it is from the Household Survey, (E) if it is from the Establishment Survey, and (B) if it is from both.

– Nominal Nonfarm jobs was +73,000. (E). The two previous months’ gains were revised to +241,000 (November) and +238,000 (October). Those had been +203,000 (November) and +200,000 (October.) That is a gain (for November and October) of zero from the previous report making the net gain of +73,000 in jobs since the last report.

– the size of the civilian non-institutional adult population increased by 178,000 in December to 246,745,000 (H).

347,000 fewer people were in the labor force in December. (H)

With a labor participation rate of 62.8% 113,600 more jobs were necessary to keep pace with population growth. We had 40,600 fewer jobs added than that. (H) The Employment/Population remained constant at 58.6%.

The Labor Participation Rate fell to 62.8% from 63.%. It was 63.6% a year ago.

The civilian noninstitutional population is 2,395.000 (H) more than 12 months ago. With a labor participation rate of 62.8% we require 1,504,000 more jobs in the past 12 months to keep pace with population growth. We had 1,374,000 (H) more folks working.
– Real (population adjusted) job loss in December was 40,600. This accounts for the changes for November and October.
– the Unemployment Rate was 6.68% down from 6.98% in November 2013(B).
– Average hourly earnings was $24.15 up from $24.11 in November 2013 (E)
– Average work week was 34.5 hours up from 34.4 hours November 2013 (E)
– Private jobs were +87,000. Government jobs were -13,000 (E)

-Good producing jobs were -3.000. The two previous months were revised to +51,000 and +30,000 (E)

-The size of the civilian labor force fell from 155,284,000 to 155,294,000 a decrease of 347,000. (H)

-The labor participation rate (percent of adult noninstitutionalized population who are part of the labor force) rose to 62.8.%. It was 63.6% a year ago. (H) This, not the unemployment rate, is the number which should get everyone’s attention. It is this 62.8% of the adult noninstitutionalized population who get pay checks and contribute to GDP.

 

According to the 4 week moving average of Initial Jobless Claims from 1/9 1,369,000 people lost their jobs in the prior 4 weeks. That normalizes to 1,512,000 lost jobs in a calendar month (there are about 13 4-week periods in a 12 month year.) This is seasonally adjusted.

Last month BLS measured 4 sets of people entering or leaving the jobs market:

– Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs was 5,366,000 down 365,000 from previous month’s Job Losers and down 1,109,000 year-on-year. (H)

– Job leavers was 862,000. This includes anyone who retired or voluntarily left working. This up 32,000 from previous month and down 138,000 year-on-year. (H)

-Reentrants was 3,036,000. Reentrants are previously employed people who were looking for a job and found one. This was -29,000 from the previous month and -579,000 year-on-year.(H)

-New entrants were 1,201000. These are people who never worked before and who are entering the labor force for the first time. This was +32,000 from previous month and -95,000 year-on-year.

One line in the BLS Report is termed “people employed part-time for economic reasons.” These are people who want to work full time but their employer, for whatever reason, decide to employ them only part-time. In this month’s report there were 48,000 more people working part-time.

The presentation of the total change in jobs is like looking at the final score of a game. The details tell the story:

– 73,000 more people are working.

– 178,000 more people are in the civilian labor force.

The unemployment rate decreased 0.3%. We are -130,000 real (population adjusted) jobs for the past 12 months..

55,300 more jobs were in retail. were temporary jobs. 40,400 more jobs were temporary.

This report indicates a very weak jobs market for December. Over the last year jobs have not been increasing at a pace fast enough to keep pace with population growth. This report by no means indicates that the economy is generating jobs at a healthy rate. We are not even, for the past year, keeping pace with population growth. The Unemployment Rate (the number which the press insists on reporting as being more important than all else) is down not so much because there are more people working as it is because more people have left the labor force.

It is, for the most part, the people who are working which keep the economy going and pay taxes to keep the government going. Having a continually smaller percent of the population working is not good news.