Welcome to the Cooley-Rupert Economic Snapshot, our view of the current economic environment. This is the latest version of our snapshot of the U.S. Economy based on the new employment numbers released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The complete Snapshot based on final revisions to third quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis can be found in our previous post.
As in all of our snapshots we present the data in a way that we find particularly useful for assessing where we are in the business cycle and tracking the U.S. economic recovery. The paths of all the series presented are plotted relative to their value at the peak of the respective business cycles. We use the business cycle dates identified by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
You can also find the most recent version of the entire snapshot in pdf form here. As always we welcome any suggestions for additional data that you would like to see and suggestions for how to improve the presentation of the data.
The Labor Market
The latest Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows a net addition of 200,000 non-farm jobs in December. Prior payrolls were revised lower for November (100,000 from 120,000) and higher for October (112,000 from 100,000). These indicate a continued improvement in labor market conditions but at the same glacial pace of recent months. When we look at total employment relative to the long term trend in employment, not only are we well below the previous peak, we are very far below where a healthy economy might be. An encouraging sign is that the manufacturing sector and the construction sector both added jobs while the Government sector continues to shed them. For comparison, as we did last month, we plot employment as reported by ADP, an association of payroll processors. Many observers view this as a useful early indicator of the BLS numbers.
Continue reading “Snapshot – The December Employment Situation: A Few More Jobs, Participation Steady”