The American economy gained 235,000 jobs last month. The unemployment rate declined to 5.2%.
This is obviously a significant slowdown, led by a collapse of growth in government jobs. On the bright side, earnings for blue-collar workers rose at an annualized rate of about 2% after accounting for inflation.
The consensus of analysts is that the slow hiring rate in August was due to the threat of Delta. Maybe so, but I suspect that it also has something to do with the wonky labor market that I mentioned a couple of days ago. I have no evidence for this, so don't take it too seriously, but there sure seems to be something a little weird going on. I don't think this is all due to Delta.
Declining Biden poll numbers, above normal inflation, disappointing employment can all be explained individually: however, if you are trying to encourage Joe Manchin, and other moderate DEMS, to move forward quickly and in an aggressive fashion then the timing of this 'underperformance' is problematic for the push to advance the $3.5 T reconciliation package.
Lol, nfp is irrelevant. Household employment was fine. Will be even better next month as unemployment drops below 5%. Waste of a post. Lazy and dumb. A nostril rip and pinkie snap would do you well.
Spadesofgrey - if Biden's polling was robust (say approaching 60% popularity), monthly economic data (employment, inflation etc) was strong etc, I believe that Manchin (and other moderate DEMS) would be much more enthusiastic of a go fast, lets pass the reconciliation bill.
I am not the only one who believes macro events impact Manchin's politics
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whats-joe-manchin-up-to
Dude, 2022 is a large white swing vote election. Your whole post is trash. Making stuff up for the sake of it. Go away and educate yourself.
Please don't feed the racist troll.
Your the troll. If your too stupid not to strip out BLS gyrations with public sector employees, you don't deserve to post. Private sector growth was solid.
You may well be right, which just demonstrates how stupid the "moderate" (actually conservative) Democrats are. A major initiative like this one is the recipe for improving Democratic popularity, so the more their popularity slumps the more important it becomes to move the whole package forward.
Nope, "falling poll numbers" at this stage are irrelevant and frankly statistical irrelevance . It's just a dumb poster mumbling, misreading a jobs report is the worst. He needs shunned.
The media freakout over Afghanistan isn't helping, either. In a rational world, turbulence for their president should make Democrats circle the wagons and get him a damned signing ceremony or two, as well as some braggable deliverables and good headlines: upside down numbers for a Democratic president aren't what you want if you're trying to get elected to Congress. Biden's brand and that of the Democratic Party obviously overlap to a great extent.
But, Democrats being Democrats (that is, because they're afraid of their own shadow) they start to imagine the attack ads tying them to an unpopular president. And they run for the exits.
I sincerely hope cooler heads prevail, and they get two bills to Joe's desk this fall. They'll either hang together or hang separately.
Infrastructure is a done deal. Your trying way too hard.
There are jobs available where work but base on the quality of people coming in, I’d say he labor market is at full employment.
I work in a perfectly nice manufacturing plant. It’s not a physically difficult job and the pay is good even for temp staffing.
Full employment achieved.
The recession is definitely winding down. Looks over by the 4th quarter.
And I’m guessing all the commenters here are employed like me or retired. Does anyone know someone unemployed?
I knew unemployed people in 2019.
I know four people closely who became unemployed due to the pandemic or that played a big part.
One was fairly highly paid and looked for another job and found one in September of 2020 and still there ( worked from home in nee job until March and now back home for last month). Highly paid and extended covid unemployment was less than what a new job paid by a good margin and he was not the type to want to not work anyway.
Another ( my sister) would have stayed employed until maybe 2025 when planned to retire . When covid unemployment extended she was paid more than she made before or likely could earn in a new job and had zero incentive to look for another job . She specifically was not getting a new job due to getting paid by unemployment. She does not believe in covid and fear of it and that was not a factor .
She is in a state that ended the unemployment but she waited until last minute to even look. Now the jobs she could have gotten before ( she was offered her old job back earlier this year and said no due to unemployment payments) and now she cannot find anything she likes. So she is considering whether to just retire early and tighten her financial belt. And I told her to take a job before unemployment ends to get the " first pick " but she did not listen to me ( cannot get her to vaccinate either).
Two are here in California. Both really have not been looking due to unemployment. One low paid and also getting more in unemployment than a job and was happy to get fired . But started looking a month ago in anticipation of unemployment ending as cannot afford otherwise. And just found a job getting paid much more than previously and more than unemployment ( which he did not expect). He listened to me and looked early.
The other is very talented and high paid and will have no trouble finding a new job. His unemployment was well below his earning potential but had savings so decided to take a partially paid year and a half vacation " on the taxpayer's dime " to quote him.
So it’s really complicated. People with skills and abilities have options but are maybe not desperate so they are biding their time.
The statistics can’t possibly reflect that dynamic.
People are forgetting August is the BLS "clean out" month with NFP. I generally go more with household in general, but this month especially. Next month is going to be crazy with pua/puac workers reincluded who weren't allowed to claim unemployment prepandemic.
It wasn’t simply low, but lower than expected. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/09/03/biden-blames-delta-variant-unvaccinated-people-for-weaker-than-expected-jobs-report.html
Again, your going with nfp. CES data was on point. At some point nfp is going to be abolished. It's a waste of time.
Kevin distorts this graph by not plotting the real value for April 2020 - it should be about -20 million, not -2 million. Here is the BLM graph:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=GxBP
One should not have to do detective work to figure out what is wrong with a graph.
I appreciate his keeping the range reasonable on his y axis. But he should stick a label on that arrow so we know how far off the scale it is.
Delta.
Supply chains remain fragile. China's still wedded to their zero-COVID policy. They shut down ports from a single infection and triggered factory closures. A growing list of companies are chartering their own ships -- IKEA, Walmart, American Eagle, Home Depot.
Domestic production shutdowns are here.GM and other auto manufacturers have slowed and temporarily shut down production, as a result of supply chain woes.
Record sick. State after state has broken their record of number of infections. Tennessee's the latest to crush their previous infection record. Washington's next.
States are mitigating. After surpassing their previous infection records, Hawaii, Oregon, and other states have imposed new restrictions limiting indoor capacity and outdoor group sizes.
People are responding to the news.The announcements themselves have resulted in a slowdown in economic activity. Airline bookings are slowing down and prices are coming down.
I went to two MLB games in Detroit a couple of weeks ago. Had dinner at a downtown restaurant and stayed overnight.
I had dinner at a nice restaurant after work yesterday and then ordered chinese takeout for lunch today. Maybe pizza delivered tomorrow. I bought some fine wine for the long weekend which is also my birthday.
This is a pretty normal life. I’m vaccinated and healthy and work too much at an actual manufacturing plant where everyone- and I do mean everyone- wears a mask all day every day. Vaccination are offered onsite. All are required to be vaccinated or perform twice weekly testing.
And we’re all just fine. Good luck to all of you. Summer is about over. Settle in for a long winter home.
Why Oregon, with generally low hospitalization is mitigating anything is a laugher. Infections are overblown. Enough of these posts.
Are you aware how quickly an exponential curve can get to really big numbers. Proactive people take steps as soon as the numbers start to grow and before they get big. Merely reactive people wait until the numbers get big and then try to do something about it. I support being proactive.
Nope. Follow were the curve is rising. It doesn't require silly restrictions.
Yes, but you are in a small minority.
I was saying back in May when cases were real low and dropping but you could see the R turn up ( but still below 1.0), that we might be in trouble again.
You need to really be proactive to not just pay attention to how fast the numbers might be increasing even if numbers low. But even a chance where the pace of the decline slows.
Schools are starting back up in person. If that holds, then more people will be looking for jobs. Expect both unemployment percentage and new jobs to both go up next month. Not sure what the will do to the official forecasts and the expectations game.
Yes, but you are in a small minority.
I was saying back in May when cases were real low and dropping but you could see the R turn up ( but still below 1.0), that we might be in trouble again.
You need to really be proactive to not just pay attention to how fast the numbers might be increasing even if numbers low. But even a chance where the pace of the decline slows.
I really do not think this jobs report is big news . Not at all unexpected to me.
Skeptonomist has a good point that the chart misrepresents by not showing the huge initial pandemic drop.
In summer and fall of 2020, we were making up a large part of that job loss. But note the drop off in job after the first few months even though covid rates were dropping. The pace of recovery always is going to slow as the easiest jobs to restore come back first
Then big winter wave just added to that slowdown and even went negative for a month. Then back to recovery mode until you have replaced most of what you lost.
Given total unemployment, looks to me that , with covid stating fixed, that july was the max recovery month and we were due for a drop-off anyway in August. And now we are in another substantial covid wave again affecting things . So that should have some effect too.
And look at the chart before pandemic. The August job gains look pretty good compared to " normal " months.
We have four effects going on.
1) continuing recovery of prior post pandemic jobs . Still positive effect but slowing
2) changes in covid . Clearly negative in August but not near like prior waves as just have shut down less.
3) distortion caused by unemployment extension ending in some states .should be a positive.
4) underlying economy outside of covid distortions. Who knows?
As I said in the comparison of states ending unemployment vs those that did not, any good effect for #3 above could be masked by worse effects in # 1 and #2 because states ending unemployment have a bigger covid wave now and got more of their job recovery in the past.
But here kevin seems to be trying to divine what this means re underlying economy #4. Really no way to tell as the three covid distortions are too big.
SC has over 400 openings state wide JUST for school BUS DRIVERS
All venues for kids - amusement parks - water parks - etc all with huge amounts of openings both here in SE NC and Myrtle Beach.
Government jobs should be relabeled teaching or school system jobs because they needed to be filled BEFORE August so that lesson plans could be adjusted and COVID protocols adjusted. On the federal side their fiscal year ENDS Sept 30 so no agency wants to hire now.
But ANYTHING to do with kids are hard jobs to fill
Kids are NOT vaccinated - who wants to be in a 30ft steel tube with them?
Kids are probably able to handle COVID better than adults but still spread it
And its hard to keep a mask on a kid
The RISK to an older worker in dealing with kids may be too much to ask of them. Add into all of this the absurd demands of out-of-control customers in food and drink establishments over masks and you can see why many people have given up on working.
I believe UI goes way down by Oct 1 (first friday) or Nov 5 due to government hiring for open positions
Ending unemployment did not do what republicans thought it would do
One interesting facet to this came out of CNBC
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/03/ending-federal-unemployment-benefits-early-will-costs-states-billions.html
(snip}
So far, 25 GOP-led states have said they will end federal unemployment insurance (UI) programs as early as June 12, including the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) program, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC).
Most of those states are ending all three programs, while a handful are only ending the FPUC program, which provides the unemployed with an extra $300 per week on top of their state benefit. You can see a break down of the new timelines here.
Ending the FPUC program early alone will take over $755 million from those receiving UI, according to the JEC report. The report also estimates that every $1 in UI generates $1.61 in local spending. *********Without the $755 million in FPUC benefits, states stand to lose $12 billion from June 19 through September 5.*************
{snip}
This is totally self inflicted for those GOP Governors
But keep in mind they talk about $300/week whereas when you see what it does to spending over 3 months it paints a different story. Newsom's CA is running a surplus and wants to distribute $600 to all CA residents because of this program.
We need clearer heads on the republican side who can think things through