From this jobs report, if you didn't know the world was ending, you'd never think the world was ending. A nice beat, consistent across all the measures of employment. Immigration, by this data, looks as strong as ever -- and, as always, they are getting jobs. Unfortunately no one cares about anything but tariffs right now. Understandable.
US Jobs
US Jobs
Friday, March 7, 2025
Solid payrolls, meeting the consensus and blowing away the whisper-number, despite bad weather effects. Federal government payrolls fell by 10,000 (but that just erases the single prior month's gain). With this report we introduce our new DOGE tracker on page 4, ranking the states by rise in jobless claims since Trump took office. Washington DC and Virginia and Number One and Number Two (but Maryland went the other way, with fewer claims). Partial correlation isn't partial causation, but it's a partial clue.
US Jobs
Friday, February 7, 2025
Just in case you had any last shred of faith in government statistics... Massive upward revisions to payrolls over the last two months. Downward revisions over ten years in the annual benchmarking exercise, but far less than estimated before. Ginormous increase in the measured size of the population, both immigrant and native. Scan this data now, distorted as it may be! But also, stay tuned for our longer report later today in which we will straighten it all out.
US Jobs
Friday, January 10, 2025
At the Fed right now: "Oh no! Too many people are working!" That's okay, their wage gains are slowing. Your work here is done.
In the real world right now: the productivity-led post-pandemic boom continues. It's especially good to see employment gains in the Household Survey strongly beat payrolls, after two months of seriously lagging.
US Jobs
Friday, December 6, 2024
Nice number -- but given last month's temporary labor effects, it should have been ever nicer as people come back to work. Looks like the fly in the ointment is diminished immigration in the final days of the Biden/Harris administration. The Fed is going to be very happy with this.
US Jobs
Friday, November 1, 2024
The BLS coyly demurs to estimate the storm impacts that might have led to a mere 12,000 net payrolls. But the Household Survey, which they say went off without a hitch, says 512,000 people are out of work due to weather. In a typical October that's 52,000. The inescapable conclusion is that 461,000 are unemployed thanks to Milton and Helene. This report might be a blockbuster in disguise.
US Jobs
Friday, October 4, 2024
We told you not to worry that "the Fed knows something scary you don't know" about the labor market. We're in a boom. No recession. Oh, and by the way, the so-called Sahm Rule reversed itself. Another trusty old technical indicator bites the dust.
US Jobs
Friday, September 6, 2024
A miss in August payrolls, but a big sequential improvement over July, especially with downward revisions. The household survey beats payrolls (for a change), and the unemployment rate ticks down slightly. Labor force at new highs. Hours worked at new highs. Is that recession in the room with you right now?
US Jobs
Friday, August 2, 2024
114,000 payrolls is the lowest since April at 108,000 (and that proved to be the first month of a quarter with 2.8% real GDP growth). The unemployment rate rose, but not enough to trigger the dreaded Sahm Rule. And adjusted for rising labor force participation, it barely rose at all. Considering the fear in the air this week, this was a very solid jobs report (and it will certainly do nothing to derail the Fed's intention to start cutting rates at the September FOMC).
US Jobs
Friday, July 5, 2024
Big downward revisions to the prior two months of payrolls, but a beat for June. The immigrant population and employment levels appear to have shrunk, and the native born appear to have expanded -- but these are not seasonally adjusted, so we really can't tell from month the month. It seems unlikely that Biden's tepid border-control policy changes could have made any difference so soon (and no matter how successful they are, they wouldn't have caused the native-born population to expand).