Behind today's Jobs(?) data
by taonow
Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 08:40:44 AM PST
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up in November (94,000), and the unemployment rate held at 4.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today
The November employment data came out today, and although there were no headline surprises in the data, there are some interesting trends if you look more closely.
I like to look at the data over a one year period to get a feel for underlying trends. The one month data is just too subject to random variation/manipulation.
So the good news is that since November of last year, the economy has created 2.5 million jobs. Now that sounds good, but the real interesting stuff is in seeing where the jobs were created. This will give us an idea of where the economy is headed and whether or not the jobs created are "good" jobs.
* taonow's diary :: ::
*
Overall:
Let's start with the big picture and look at the major categories of job growth/shrinkage
Goods producing (manufacturing etc.): Down 196,000 (down 0.9%)
Trade, transport, utilities: Up 687,000 (up 2.6%)
Professional and Business services: Up 416,000 (up 2.3%)
Health Care: Up 414,000 (up 3.2%)
Educational services (private sector): Up 278,000 (up 9.4%)
Local Government - education: Up 447,000 (up 5.6%)
State Government - education: Up 199,000 (up 8.6%)
Analysis:
As has been the case for some time manufacturing (goods producing) employment continues to shrink. More and more the country's economy is service based. This trend has been ongoing and shows no sign of reversing, even with the decline of the US dollar.
The majority of jobs created continue to be in services, with health and education being the main drivers. The big jump over the last year has been in education related employment, though so far I have not been able to uncover what is behind this other than local governments in the real estate boom having funds available to plow back into education.
On the trade transport and utilities side, the gains are almost all from retail. Retail employment is up 464,000. The gains here are broadly based with the biggest gains in general merchandise stores and department stores. As would be expected employment in building material stores was down.
In professional and business services the gains are broad based with the biggest jump percentage wise coming from management and technical consulting services (up 8.5%).
Other points of Interest:
Food services and drinking places is a huge employer (almost as many employees as under production workers in manufacturing). Here the increase in jobs was 233,000 (up 2.4%). By comparison manufacturing production workers decreased by 68,000 in the same period. It won't be too long before hamburger flippers and wait staff outnumber production workers.
As would be expected construction employment has fallen over the last year. The surprise is that the fall has not been bigger. Overall construction employment is down only 49,000, although this obscures the drops in residential construction (down 53,000) and residential building contractors (down 92,000). The rest of construction is basically flat. Somehow this number does not seem right. If the number of housing starts is down so much, how can residential building construction employment only be down 9.5%? Or Residential specialty trade contractors only down 4%?
Jobs in real estate continue to be relatively unaffected by the real estate slump down only 3,000 (0.2%) jobs. I find this one a bit hard to imagine.
Outside of education, governments at all levels are not adding significant numbers of jobs.
Conclusion:
Base on the government data enough jobs are being created to handle the increase in the labor force...BUT...there is some question as to the economic worth of the the jobs being created. The continued decline in manufacturing jobs remains a big problem. In addition the jobs picture remains vulnerable to a a number of possible slowdowns. Retail employment would fall with a drop in consumer spending, and a decline in taxes (real estate based) to local governments may cause backtracking on education related employment gains).
Fri Dec 07, 2007 at 08:40:44 AM PST
Nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend up in November (94,000), and the unemployment rate held at 4.7 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today
The November employment data came out today, and although there were no headline surprises in the data, there are some interesting trends if you look more closely.
I like to look at the data over a one year period to get a feel for underlying trends. The one month data is just too subject to random variation/manipulation.
So the good news is that since November of last year, the economy has created 2.5 million jobs. Now that sounds good, but the real interesting stuff is in seeing where the jobs were created. This will give us an idea of where the economy is headed and whether or not the jobs created are "good" jobs.
* taonow's diary :: ::
*
Overall:
Let's start with the big picture and look at the major categories of job growth/shrinkage
Goods producing (manufacturing etc.): Down 196,000 (down 0.9%)
Trade, transport, utilities: Up 687,000 (up 2.6%)
Professional and Business services: Up 416,000 (up 2.3%)
Health Care: Up 414,000 (up 3.2%)
Educational services (private sector): Up 278,000 (up 9.4%)
Local Government - education: Up 447,000 (up 5.6%)
State Government - education: Up 199,000 (up 8.6%)
Analysis:
As has been the case for some time manufacturing (goods producing) employment continues to shrink. More and more the country's economy is service based. This trend has been ongoing and shows no sign of reversing, even with the decline of the US dollar.
The majority of jobs created continue to be in services, with health and education being the main drivers. The big jump over the last year has been in education related employment, though so far I have not been able to uncover what is behind this other than local governments in the real estate boom having funds available to plow back into education.
On the trade transport and utilities side, the gains are almost all from retail. Retail employment is up 464,000. The gains here are broadly based with the biggest gains in general merchandise stores and department stores. As would be expected employment in building material stores was down.
In professional and business services the gains are broad based with the biggest jump percentage wise coming from management and technical consulting services (up 8.5%).
Other points of Interest:
Food services and drinking places is a huge employer (almost as many employees as under production workers in manufacturing). Here the increase in jobs was 233,000 (up 2.4%). By comparison manufacturing production workers decreased by 68,000 in the same period. It won't be too long before hamburger flippers and wait staff outnumber production workers.
As would be expected construction employment has fallen over the last year. The surprise is that the fall has not been bigger. Overall construction employment is down only 49,000, although this obscures the drops in residential construction (down 53,000) and residential building contractors (down 92,000). The rest of construction is basically flat. Somehow this number does not seem right. If the number of housing starts is down so much, how can residential building construction employment only be down 9.5%? Or Residential specialty trade contractors only down 4%?
Jobs in real estate continue to be relatively unaffected by the real estate slump down only 3,000 (0.2%) jobs. I find this one a bit hard to imagine.
Outside of education, governments at all levels are not adding significant numbers of jobs.
Conclusion:
Base on the government data enough jobs are being created to handle the increase in the labor force...BUT...there is some question as to the economic worth of the the jobs being created. The continued decline in manufacturing jobs remains a big problem. In addition the jobs picture remains vulnerable to a a number of possible slowdowns. Retail employment would fall with a drop in consumer spending, and a decline in taxes (real estate based) to local governments may cause backtracking on education related employment gains).
Labels: jobs report
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