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Employment Summary and Discussion
Calculated risk is a superb blog for timely analysis of economic data. It's solid center-left in perpesctive (which is almost radical today) and dependable.
Employment Summary and Discussion
by CalculatedRisk on 3/09/2012 10:22:00 AM
This was a solid report, especially considering the upward revisions to payrolls for December and January. The better than normal weather helped, and there is still a long ways to go for a healthy labor market with solid wage gains.
Some analysts are comparing the last three months of payroll growth to early 2011, and arguing job growth will disappoint in the coming months. I also expect some slowing in employment growth since nice weather helps the most during the winter months. But there are reasons to expect better job growth overall this year - remember 2011 was negatively impacted by the tsunami, bad weather, high oil prices and the debt ceiling debate. We can't predict the weather, and oil prices are high again - but hopefully there will be no natural disasters, and also no threats of defaulting on the debt.
Plus housing has made the bottom turn, and even with a sluggish housing recovery, residential investment will add to economic growth in 2012. Also, the employment losses from state and local governments will probably end mid-year. In the last 6 months of 2011, there were 119,000 government jobs lost. This year, in the second half, job losses will probably be close to zero. As the BLS noted: "Government employment was essentially unchanged in January and February. In 2011, government lost an average of 22,000 jobs per month."
On to the report: There were 227,000 payroll jobs added in February, with 233,000 private sector jobs added, and 6,000 government jobs lost. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.3%. U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers and marginally attached workers, declined to 14.9% from 15.1% in January. This remains very high - U-6 was in the 8% range in 2007 - but this is the lowest level of U-6 since January 2009...
(more)
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/03/employment-summary-and-discussion.html
by CalculatedRisk on 3/09/2012 10:22:00 AM
This was a solid report, especially considering the upward revisions to payrolls for December and January. The better than normal weather helped, and there is still a long ways to go for a healthy labor market with solid wage gains.
Some analysts are comparing the last three months of payroll growth to early 2011, and arguing job growth will disappoint in the coming months. I also expect some slowing in employment growth since nice weather helps the most during the winter months. But there are reasons to expect better job growth overall this year - remember 2011 was negatively impacted by the tsunami, bad weather, high oil prices and the debt ceiling debate. We can't predict the weather, and oil prices are high again - but hopefully there will be no natural disasters, and also no threats of defaulting on the debt.
Plus housing has made the bottom turn, and even with a sluggish housing recovery, residential investment will add to economic growth in 2012. Also, the employment losses from state and local governments will probably end mid-year. In the last 6 months of 2011, there were 119,000 government jobs lost. This year, in the second half, job losses will probably be close to zero. As the BLS noted: "Government employment was essentially unchanged in January and February. In 2011, government lost an average of 22,000 jobs per month."
On to the report: There were 227,000 payroll jobs added in February, with 233,000 private sector jobs added, and 6,000 government jobs lost. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.3%. U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers and marginally attached workers, declined to 14.9% from 15.1% in January. This remains very high - U-6 was in the 8% range in 2007 - but this is the lowest level of U-6 since January 2009...
(more)
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2012/03/employment-summary-and-discussion.html
