Dissecting the Employment Report - April 2013

[Benton D Struckcheon]

Link to report: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

I looked for something good in this report. Nothing doing.
I figure it has to be the boost back up in the payroll tax that made this such a lousy report. It was a little surprising that it didn't hit last month, actually.
Hyman Minsky, a Keynesian who wrote a famous book about him that I highly recommend, actually recommended eliminating the payroll taxes, and folding them into the income tax by making that tax more progressive. Not a bad idea but don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen.

Anyway, in the search for some good news, I came up with something, reminded by this thread.
There are actually two surveys in the unemployment report the BLS puts out each month. One is the Current Population Survey, or CPS, the other the Current Establishment Survey, or CES. The CPS gives you the unemployment rate that gets reported in the headlines each month, while the jobs number you hear reported usually comes from the CES.
Now there's always a difference in the number of jobs reported in these two surveys. This past month, the CPS reported 143,286,000 jobs, while the CES reported 135,195,000 jobs. That gap rises and falls, it turns out, according to the National Bureau for Economic Research, with the economic cycle. See this blog post from the Liscio Report, one of the few worthwhile Wall Street advisory services. (Don't know if it's still around actually. John Liscio died a while back.) As it points out, the CPS captures the underground economy better, while the CES captures only the formal economy. If the number in the CPS is rising relative to the CES, that's a sign that jobs are moving to the informal economy, which is usually a sign of a deteriorating job market. If the ratio between the two is falling, that usually means things are getting better as people are able to find regular jobs and no longer have to work for cash.
The ratio has been falling since July 2009, which is consistent with the recovery that set in around that time. This past month the ratio between the CES and the CPS fell somewhat from last month to this month as well. So there: one small piece of good news embedded in the report.
It ain't much, but it's all I could find.

[mbperrin]

1. I found the report encouraging.

10,000 baby boomers a day are retiring since Jan 1 and will for the next 18 years.

I hope students of any sort, at least one parent in each family, and people over 65 will NOT enter the workforce. We have far too many people working at money right now and not enough on their lives and families.

As participation shrinks, wages will rise as "productivity" decreases. All productivity means is doing more work for less pay, and companies have had their way for 40 years. Time to reverse that.