Bill Mitchell — US Labour Market still adding jobs but scope for further expansion

Last week’s (July 5, 2019) release by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – June 2019 – reveals a steady labour market with month-to-month volatility. The US labour market is still adding jobs, albeit at a slower pace than last year. The unemployment rate remains low (at 3.67 per cent) and the participation rate has moved up a tick, which is a good sign. It is also clear that there is still a substantial jobs deficit remaining and considerable scope for increased participation....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
US Labour Market still adding jobs but scope for further expansion
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

FRED Blog — One rate does not rule them all : Unemployment is uneven across U.S. counties

The graph above shows the annual civilian unemployment rate from 1948 to 2018, and here are some highlights: Ten years ago, after the Great Recession, the U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 9.6%. (The only higher unemployment rate in this series was 9.7%, in 1982.) It gradually came down to 3.9% in 2018, the lowest in fifty years. (The rate in 1969 was 3.5%.)

But these national unemployment numbers mask the variation that exists across different regions in the U.S. Fortunately, we have GeoFRED to paint a clearer picture: The map below shows the unemployment rate for 2018 for 3,133 U.S. counties. The counties are split into two equally sized groups according to their unemployment rates: Those with lower unemployment are in blue, and those with higher unemployment are in red. Specifically, the blue group had a rate lower than 3.87%, and the red group had a rate between 3.87% and the maximum of 18.08%. (By the way, all counties in New Hampshire are blue and all counties in Arizona are red.) 

FRED Blog
One rate does not rule them all : Unemployment is uneven across U.S. counties

Bill Mitchell — US labour market steadies in March 2019

Last week’s (April 5, 2019) release by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of their latest labour market data – Employment Situation Summary – March 2019 – is still being affected by the variability in the sampling and benchmarking changes made by the BLS. However, working through those impacts, one concludes that the US labour market is still adding jobs, albeit at a slower pace than last year. The unemployment rate remains low (at 3.81 per cent) and the participation rate has come off a bit, indicating a slowdown in underway, although month-to-month variability should not be taken as a trend. It is also clear that there is still a substantial jobs deficit remaining and considerable scope for increased participation.

Overview for March 2019

• Payroll employment rose by 196,000 – big shift from February.
• Total labour force survey employment fell by 201 thousand net (-0.12 per cent).
• The seasonally adjusted labour force fell by 224 thousand (-0.14 per cent).
• Official unemployment fell by 24 thousand to 6.211 million.
• The official unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.82 per cent.
• The participation rate was fell by 0.2 points to 63 per cent but remains well below the peak in December 2006 (66.4 per cent). Adjusting for age effects, the rise in those who have given up looking for work for one reason or another since December 2006 is around 3,693 thousand workers. The corresponding unemployment rate would be 5.8 per cent, far higher than the current official rate.
• The broad labour underutilisation measure (U6) was unchanged at 7.3 per cent.

Further, for those who are confused about the difference between the payroll (establishment) data and the household survey data you should read this blog – US labour market is in a deplorable state – where I explain the differences in detail....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
US labour market steadies in March 2019
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Timothy Taylor — What Message is the Beveridge Curve Sending?

What does this shift in the Beveridge curve relationship mean? In a literal sense, it means that for a certain unemployment rate (on the horizontal axis), there is a higher rate of job openings (on the vertical axis). To put it another way, employers in the years after 2009 seemed more reluctant to fill their job openings, or as economists say, it appeared to be harder for employers to find a match when they listed a job among the workers who were applying for those jobs. The "matching efficiency" of the US labor market had declined....

This means that "transitional unemployment" is increasing. After becoming unemployed, it is taking longer to find a matching job. It also implies that more workers will be less than ideally employed, that is, taking jobs beneath their qualification level, or part-time jobs.

Conversable Economist
What Message is the Beveridge Curve Sending?
Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Ramanan — Twin Deceits

Ramanan analyzes the sleight of hand going on in the neoclassical world now regarding employment and fiscal policy.

The Case for Concerted Action
Twin Deceits
V. Ramanan

Gallup Chairman and CEO — What recovery?

I've been reading a lot about a "recovering" economy. It was even trumpeted on Page 1 of The New York Times and Financial Times last week. 

I don't think it's true.

Gallup

The Invisible American

Jim Clifton | Chairman and CEO at Gallup

ht Zero Hedge

David F. Ruccio — How the reserve army works

The new jobs report is out and, pretty much as expected, a bunch of new jobs (242,000, to be exact) were created in February and the official unemployment rate remained the same (at 4.9 percent). But workers’ wages actually declined.

What’s going on?

What’s going on is a key feature of capitalism: the reserve army of labor.

Occasional Links & Commentary
How the reserve army works
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

Lars P. Syll — Demand theory gobbledygook

Back in 1992, New Jersey raised the minimum wage by 18 per cent while its neighbour state, Pennsylvania, left its minimum wage unchanged. Unemployment in New Jersey should — according to mainstream economic theory — have increased relative to Pennsylvania. However, when economists Alan Krueger and David Card gathered information on fast food restaurants in the two states, it turned out that unemployment had actually decreased in New Jersey relative to that in Pennsylvania. Counter to neoclassical demand theory we had an anomalous case of a backward-sloping supply curve. 

Lo and behold! 

But of course — when facts and theory don’t agree, it’s the facts that have to be wrong …

Read the rest where James Buchanan makes a fool of himself without being savvy enough to realize that, "It's the ideology, stupid."
I'm not sure that gobbledygook is the correct term here though. I'd suggest Buchanan's own term, camp-following whoring.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" — attributed to J. M. Keynes.

Ideologues double down.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
Demand theory gobbledygookLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Heidi Shierholz — Number of Missing Workers Jumps to All-Time High

Falling unemployment rate. Cheering. Falling unemployment rate AND falling participation rate? Bronx cheer.

After a few months of the labor force participation rate (LFPR) showing what was hopefully early signs of strength, it dropped back down to its low of the recovery in March. The biggest drops in labor force participation in March were among young workers; the LFPR of workers under age 25 dropped 1.3 percentage points, from 55.6 percent to 54.3 percent. (However, these series are erratic due to small sample sizes, and the April decline in the under-25 LFPR was simply a reversal of its jump up in March.) The biggest drop in LFPR in April was among men under the age of 20. To my knowledge, data on unemployment insurance exhaustions by age don’t exist, but it is unlikely that young workers are a big proportion of exhaustions. This means that the April drop in labor force participation is likely not being driven by the expiration of federal unemployment insurance benefits last December as some have suggested, but simply by the weak labor market.

There is currently an all-time-high of 6.2 million missing workers (potential workers who are neither working nor actively seeking work due to the weak labor market). Almost a quarter of them (1.4 million) are under age 25. The figure below shows that the unemployment rate for young workers would be 18.4 percent instead of 12.8 percent if the missing young workers were in the labor force looking for work and thus counted as unemployed.

Working Economics
Number of Missing Workers Jumps to All-Time High
Heidi Shierholz | Economist, Economic Policy Institute
(h/t Mark Thoma at Economist's View)

Jeff Cox — The really bad news behind the jobless claims drop

Weekly jobless claims have been on an inexorable path lower this summer. So have paychecks.

CNBC NetNet
The really bad news behind the jobless claims drop
Jeff Cox | Senior Writer

Josh Bivens — GDP Shows The Economy is Growing too Slowly to Improve Employment

GDP Shows The Economy is Growing too Slowly to Improve Employment

Economic Policy Institute — Quick Takes
Don’t let the new numbers distract you
Josh Bivens