Bill Mitchell — US labour market – muddling along and real wages growth goes negative

On July 6, 2018, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – June 2018 – which showed that total non-farm employment from the payroll survey rose by 213,000 and the unemployment rate rose by 0.2 per cent to 4 per cent in June 2018. The employment-population ratio was unchanged in June at 60.4 percent and has been largely stable since February 2018. The Labour Force Survey data, however, showed that employment only rose just 102 thousand in June 2018 and was accompanied by a substantial rise in the labour force (601 thousand) on the back of a surge in participation (up 0.2 points), which meant that total unemployment rise by 499 thousand. The broad labour underutilisation measure (U-6) also signalled weakness, rising by 0.2 points. There is still no evidence of a wages breakout going on although wages growth for blue-collar occupations has surpassed the white-collar occupations over the last 8 quarters. However, the data shows that real wages fell in June 2018 by 0.4 points. Taken together, the US labour market is showing no definite trend up or down at present and it is still some distance from being at full employment.…

Bill deconstructs and interprets the latest US BLS report.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
US labour market – muddling along and real wages growth goes negative
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Craig Torres — U.S. Stats Officials Say Measurements of GDP, Inflation Are Off

Top officials from two U.S. government economic-statistics agencies said their measurement tools are understating growth and overstating some components of inflation by modest amounts, while cautioning that this doesn’t explain the sluggish expansion in recent years....

Bloomberg
U.S. Stats Officials Say Measurements of GDP, Inflation Are Off

Craig Torres

ht Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism

FRED® Blog — What is unemployment? There is more to it than not working

What is unemployment? To answer this question first requires a few definitions. A person is considered unemployed if he or she is actively seeking work and willing to take work here and now. It is therefore not sufficient to simply not be working. But this definition of unemployment does necessarily define (1) whether someone who is underemployed should be counted as well or (2) how intensely someone must search for a job to qualify as unemployed. For this reason, the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides different unemployment rates, graphed above. These are commonly called U-1 through U-6....

The FRED® Blog
What is unemployment? There is more to it than not working

Robert Oak — Unemployment Report Starts the Year By Breaking the 5% Unemployment Rate Barrier, Big Deal

Parsing the unemployment report with graphs. On digging deeper, things are not as rosy for workers as the headline unemployment rate of 4.9% makes them sound.

Economic Populist
Unemployment Report Starts the Year By Breaking the 5% Unemployment Rate Barrier, Big Deal
Robert Oak

Bill McBride — Employment: Party Like It's 1999!

As of the October BLS report, the economy has added 2.225 million private sector jobs, and 2.285 million total jobs in 2014. 

To be the best year since 1999, the economy needs to add an additional 176 thousand private sector jobs (probably happen in November), and 222 thousand total nonfarm jobs.…

Calculated Risk
Employment: Party Like It's 1999!
Bill McBride

BLS — Initial unemployment claims increase to 374,000 this week from 308,000

In the week ending October 5, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 374,000, an increase of 66,000 from the previous week's unrevised figure of 308,000. The 4-week moving average was 325,000, an increase of 20,000 from the previous week's unrevised average of 305,000.

United States Department of Labor — Employment And Training Administration

BLS: The 30 occupations with the largest projected employment growth, 2010-20

From the BLS: The 30 occupations with the largest projected employment growth, 2010-20

of the top ten, only teachers and nurses require a degree...and four don't even require a high school diploma for entry...

Angry Bear
Top ten fastest growing occupations
Dan Crawford (Rdan)

The real story on employment is — underemployment

... contrary to simplistic headline charts, the number one data series that pundits should be focusing on, is the subset of persons "who currently want a job." Indicatively, as we showed on Friday, this just hit an all time high... even according to the BLS:

Read it at Zero Hedge

Gallup Finds Recent Job Boost Due To "Temp And Part-Time" Hiring; Underemployment Greater Than Prior Year

by Tyler Durden