8/8/19: Upbeat Jobs Reports Miss Some Real Points

Unemployment claims down, the weekly jobs report seemed to have triggered the usual litany of positive commentary in the business media

But all is not cheerful in the U.S. labor markets, once you start scratching below the surface. Here are two broader metrics of labor markets health: the civilian employment to population ratio and the labor force participation rate, based on monthly data through July:

The above shows that

1. Civilian labor force participation rate is running still below the levels last seen in the late 1970s, and the current recovery period average (close to the latests monthly running rate) is below any recovery period average since the second half 1970s recession end.
2. You have to go back to the mid-1980s to find comparable 'expansion period'-consistent levels of labor force participation rate as we have today. This is dire. Current recovery-period and President Trump's tenure period averages for labor force participation rate sit below all recovery periods' averages from 1984 through 2006. 

So much for upbeat jobs reports.

7/2/2014: US Labour Force Participation Rate

Illustrating the disaster that is US Labour market:

via Ioan Smith @moved_average

The latest reading is 62% for January 2014. We are in the late 1970s, just after the infamous bouts of stagflation have ravaged the US economy, setting stage for the Reagan's 'revolution'…

In trailing news, of course, the Non-Farm Payrolls report for January was a massive miss on expectations, with only 113,000 new jobs actually recorded against the analysts' hopium fuelled 180,000 expectation.

With that, employment to population ratio (the one I track for Ireland and the one many Irish economists and media talking heads are saying I should not track - cause they don't like it) rose to 58.8%.

Unemployment fell from 6.7% to 6.6%, getting dangerously close to the Fed's imaginary 6.5% bound (the promise of Fed hiking rates at/after 6.5% is about as real currently as the promise of Mario Draghi to 'activate' OMT). But on a big positive side: unemployment rate for those with only a high school education fell from 7.1% to 6.5% as construction industry started hiring once again skill-less workers.


Note: for Ireland, participation rate currently stands at 60.7% (Q3 2013) down from 64.7 in Q3 2007 so proportionately, Irish decline is slightly smaller than the US decline...