The Employment Report
The employment report came out today. Calculated Risk shares my assessment of the overall picture that emerges from the numbers in the report:
This is a very weak report, especially considering the downward revision to June. The participation rate declined again, and that is why the unemployment rate was steady - and that is bad news.Many observers are looking for "glimmers of hope" in the report and pointing to private sector job growth of 71,000, which is higher than in previous months and thus evidence of acceleration in job growth, to an increase in hours worked, an increase in wages, and a fall in workers involuntarily working part-time.
However, as noted in the "glimmers of hope" link, and as I have noted many, many times, we need 100,000-150,000 jobs per month just to keep up with population growth, and even more than that if we want to make up for past losses. That is, we need faster growth than 100,000-150,000 per month if we want the economy to do more than just keep up with population growth and reemploy the millions and millions of people who are now out of work. So job growth of 71,000 still represents a declining labor market, and does nothing to offset past losses.
Dean Baker reviews the numbers, and adds cautionary notes as to why the glimmers of hope aren't quite the positive signs they might appear to be at first glance:
Job Loss Sends Employment Ratio Downward, by Dean Baker: For the second consecutive month, the economy created virtually no jobs, net of temporary Census jobs. The Labor Department reported that the economy lost 131,000 jobs in July, 12,000 less than the 143,000 drop in the number of temporary Census workers. ...
The job loss corresponds to a decline in labor force participation. While the unemployment rate has edged down by 0.2 percentage points to 9.5 percent since May, this is attributable to people who gave up looking for work and left the labor force. The employment to population ratio fell by 0.3 percentage points to 54.4 percent, only slightly above the 54.2 percent low in December. ...
There were substantial declines in all the measures of duration of unemployment. This likely reflects many long-term unemployed dropping out of the workforce after losing benefits. The percent of multiple jobholders dropped by 0.3 percentage points to the lowest on record. This presumably reflects difficulty in getting jobs.
There are very few obvious sources of job growth on the establishment side. Manufacturing added 36,000 jobs, but most of this increase was attributable to a 20,500 rise in jobs in the auto industry and a 9,100 increase in jobs in fabricated metals. Most of these rises are attributable to the fact that Detroit auto makers did not shut down in July to change models. The underlying rate of job growth in manufacturing is very weak, even if at all positive.
Retail trade added 6,700 jobs, but with a 13,000 downward revision to last month's job loss number, employment is still 14,000 below the May level. Financial services lost 17,000 jobs, with real estate counting for more than half of the loss. Professional and business services are now shedding jobs, with the sector losing 13,000 jobs last month. Employment services lost 23,300 jobs, a bad harbinger for future job growth. Even the restaurant sector is losing jobs, shedding 10,600 workers in July, the 3rd consecutive decline.
State and local governments shed 48,000 jobs in July, a result of budget cutting coinciding with the new fiscal year. The only sectors that added substantial numbers of jobs were health care (27,800) and, strangely, ground transit which added 10,600 jobs in July, 2.5 percent of employment in the sector.
There was a small uptick in average hours (all in the goods-producing sector), but this just returned hours to the May level. ... Nominal wages rose at just a 1.4 percent annual rate, also not a good sign.
With the end of the inventory cycle, a huge wave of state and local cutbacks and further declines in house prices on the way, the situation looks bleak for the second half of 2010.Robert Reich emphasizes many of the same points:
The economy is still in a deep hole, and we're not climbing out.
Remember, we need 125,000 new jobs per month simply to keep up with the growth of the American population seeking jobs. But according to this morning's job's report, private-sector employers added just 71,000 jobs in July. ... In other words, the hole keeps getting deeper. ...
The only slightly bright news is that manufacturing payrolls increased by 36,000 in July, but those gains are almost surely going to evaporate in August. Manufacturing expanded in July at the slowest pace of the year as orders and production decelerated.
All this blur of numbers means two things: An extraordinary number of Americans are still hurting. And it's more important than ever for the US government to step in with a larger stimulus that puts more people to work (a WPA, for example), and tax cuts for people who will spend them (a two-year payroll tax holiday on the first $20K of income). We cannot get out of this hole without major federal action.Many of us who worried this was coming have been calling for more action for well over a year now, but to no effect. As the WSJ notes, this will set off a debate within the Fed about whether to try to give the economy more help at it's monetary policy meeting this week. My own view is they will continue to rationalize -- perhaps with those so-called glimmers of hope discussed above -- why there's nothing more they can and should do, and they will continue to sit on their hands. There's more than enough evidence to justify more action, and that was true before this report added to it, but the Fed refuses to see it.
I should add one more thing. My first choice in trying to help the economy would be fiscal policy, I think that has a much better chance of working, creating jobs in particular, than monetary policy. Take a look at what happened to state and local hiring, one place where fiscal policy could clearly help. Thus, I don't want criticism of the Fed to be used to deflect criticism from Congress for their (lack of) response. Fiscal policy authorities have not responded adequately to this crisis, and we see the results in today's report. So we shouldn't let fiscal authorities off the hook as we also criticize the Fed's failure to do more.
For more on the report, see: WSJ, FT, Bloomberg, Washington Post, NY Times, RTE, and Angry Bear. [Also posted at MoneyWatch.]
Update: Let me add this note on the numbers. Above, Dean Baker says the private sector job loss was 12,000 and Calculated Risk says the same thing. However, most reports are citing a figure of 71,000. Why the difference?:
Employment Report: Why the different payroll numbers?, by Calculated Risk: Once again there is some confusion about which payroll number to report.
Basically the media is confusing people. I explained this last month: ...The headline payroll number for July was minus 131,000. The number of temporary decennial Census jobs lost was 143,000.
To be consistent with previous employment reports (and remove the decennial Census), the headline number should be reported as 12,000 ex-Census. ... Instead most media reports have been using the private hiring number of 71,000 apparently because of the complicated math (subtracting -143,000 from -131,000). Private hiring is important too, but leaves out changes in government payroll and is not consistent.
I've posted all the numbers, but I've led with the headline number ex-Census - and that is especially important now since state and local governments are under pressure.I probably should have noted this earlier and explained why the 12,000 figure should be used, hence the second thoughts and this update only minutes after this was posted. But I thought it would simply confuse the issue and deflect attention from the important point which is that job growth is very weak no matter how it is measured.
