Nonfarm payroll employment was little changed (-36,000) in February, and theunemployment rate held at 9.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticsreported today. Employment fell in construction and information, while temporary help services added jobs. Severe winter weather in parts of the country may have affected payroll employment and hours; however, it is not possible to quantify precisely the net impact of the winter storms on the measures. For more information on the effects of the severe weather on employment estimates, see the box note at the end of the release.
Let's take a look at the report's data.
The unemployment rate appears to have topped out. However,
The jobs picture is floating around 0 rather than positive gains.
From the household survey:
The number of unemployed people increased by 34,000, increasing from 14,837,000 to 14,871,000.
The household employment population increased by 308,000.
Not in the labor force decreased by 176,000.
From the establishment survey:
Total goods producing industries say 60,000 in losses, with the biggest hit to construction at -64,000. Manufacturing actually added 1,000 jobs along with 20,000 last month. That tells us the long increases in various manufacturing measures are starting to lead to some job growth. My guess is the drop in construction employment is weather related.
Service jobs increased 42,000, with a big increase coming in professional services (+51,000). Temp help again increased, this time by 47,500.
Average weekly hours decreased .1 while average hourly earnings increased $.03. Average weekly earnings also dipped because of the decrease in hourly earnings.
I'd call this report fair. The positive signs are in the household survey's increase in employment (which typically leads the establishment survey) and temporary work. That lack of a meaningful increase in jobs is disturbing, however.
5 comments:
Check this out ...
http://www.shrm.org/Research/MonthlyEmploymentIndices/line/Documents/LINE%20March%202010.pdf
If I am interject, this is really beginning to look like another jobless recovery though. The comparisons to the last V ('83) recovery are almost done on a time line basis and we would need to see real sharp drops in the unemployment rate soon or I fear we could be staring at 8%+ unemployment into potentially 2012. I would post some nice comparative graphs, but my photobucket account is limit out.
The birth/death adjustment added 97,000 fictitious jobs to the payroll survey total. The census hiring added another 15,000 fake jobs. The accuracy of the payroll survey's 36,000 job loss estimate is validated a bit, however, by Trimtabs report which estimate 30k job losses. As we know, Trimtabs is far more accurate than the payroll survey until the final BLS revisions, which take place often a few years after the fact. Trimtabs also showed the first the first year on year increase in wages and salaries since November 2008; although they say this may have occurred because of Wall Street bonuses.
Anon at 10:33 pm
Was TrimTabs more accurate when they declared the recession over in April 2008?
SilverOz is the maven on the b/d model here, but my sense is that rather than address the b/d shortcomings directly, the BLS decided to add a -100,000 lead weight to the economy each month, per their revisions announced a month ago. So I disagree that we need to subtract the same thing a second time.
Adding in a synchronized global recession harming exports gives a double-barreled shot.
The 2008 recession began 7 years after the 2001 capital goods recession,
so there were plenty of excesses just in those 7 years to work off.
So much of life is cyclical. If we pull together and follow Barry’s advice above to preserve
the system but remember that what are being called “banks” in this debate are very large
holding companies that own as part of their holdings depository institutions (real banks),
then we won’t cry if the holding companies vanish.
As a graphic design firm, we have to deal with over-seas designers,
bid-based design websites, templates, low-ballers, and all kinds of economic competition.
We respond by offering our years of expertise,
working more efficiently, and keeping our prices reasonable.
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