By Peter Rupert
The BLS establishment data released this morning showed a payroll employment gain of 210,000. This from the WSJ before the announcement, “Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimate that employers added 573,000 jobs in November, on par with October, and unemployment ticked down to 4.5% from 4.6%.” That is a big miss but, as has been remarked on several times in this blog, this forecasting thing is not ez. There were, however, upward revisions for September (up 67,000) and October (up 15,000) to take a little sting off the November headline number. While the private sector increased 235,000 the government sector declined 25,000. Maybe Omicron fears drove the decline in retail employment of 20,400 and the small gain in leisure and hospitality of 23,000. As many people have noticed, there are no cars for sale it seems. Employment in motor vehicles and parts fell 10,100.
Average hours of work inched up from 34.7 to 34.8, giving a little more oomph to today’s report. One way to think about production of goods and services is to measure the inputs into producing those goods and services. The “headline” employment number, seen as disappointing by many,” is only one measure of the productive capacity…and a partial one at that. To get a more complete measure, multiply the number of those working in the private sector by their average weekly hours of private workers times the number of weeks in a month. And no, there are not 4 weeks in a month. For months with 31 days there are 4.4286 weeks; for months with 30 days there are 4.2857 weeks; for 28 days it is 4.0 weeks and for 29 days it is 4.1429 weeks. Going from September to October total hours of worked climbed about 3.5% and from October to November total hours fell about 3%. Average hourly earnings climbed 8 cents to $31.03; however, year over year inflation has outpaced the growth in average hourly earnings.
The household survey showed an increase in the civilian labor force of 594,000 and an increase in those employed by 1,136,000. With population increasing 121,000 this lead to a big increase in the employment to population ratio, from 58.8 to 59.2. The number of people unemployed fell 542,000 and the unemployment rate dipped to 4.2% from 4.6%. It is remarkable to see how quickly the number of unemployed and the unemployment rate have fallen compared to other economic recoveries.
Initial claims popped up 28,000 to 222,000 in the week of November 27 after the claims hit the lowest in 52 years last week at 194,000. Continued claims fell
Overall, the labor market continues to strengthen even given the shortfall in employment compared to what was expected. Of course there is still plenty of mismatch it appears as there are still more job openings that unemployed persons. One place this is showing up is in the number of self employed persons. In April of 2020, just as the pandemic was starting, there were 8,221,000 self employed. That number is now 9,997,000.
