It is so hard to understand what is really happening in the job market. An under-appreciated factor is the end of illegal immigration and the accompanying involuntary and voluntary removal of those persons from the US and the work force. So while the release today by the BLS of February employment data looks bad, I don’t know what the real state of the job market is. Job growth was non-existent in February, in fact overall jobs fell by 92,000, and January and December job increases were revised downward. Recall that the establishment survey is used to determine number of jobs, which is separate from number of people employed. The unemployment rate, which is calculated from a separate survey, increased slightly. That survey determines the number of people who are working or unemployed. According to the release, strikes at health care facilities and weather played a role in the decline in jobs. Private jobs fell as well as government ones.
On the positive side, wages have risen 3.8% year-over-year and .4% in February month-over-month. This suggests a somewhat tight labor market and also means that pay increases are rising faster than inflation. I would also note that non-government data sources report good private job growth and a very low level of layoffs. Multiple significant revisions to the BLS’ model also impacted the report, most notably the “birth/death” model which attempts to adjust for employment at new businesses and those existing businesses going defunct. The population numbers were also changed, with a sharp reduction in the working age population estimate, almost certainly due to removal of illegal immigrants. Also positive was that native-born workers rose substantially while foreign-born workers declined. As I said at the top, it is hard to really know what is happening until all these revisions to methodology have been in place for several months and the illegal immigration picture has settled out. (BLS Release)
According to the BLS release: “The number of people employed part time for economic reasons decreased by 477,000 to 4.4 million in February. These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs.”
So if total employment was down by 92K and part time was down by 477K, then it would seem that full time employment was up by 385K. That is a lot. If I am not mistaken, the wage data is only for those employed full time. So the big move from part time to full time means that earnings are up by a lot more than wages.
two different surveys, one is from the household survey and one from the business survey. I don’t know why they do this, but it makes it very hard to reconcile numbers. If you take the multiple jobholders from the household survey, you might be able to try to reconcile the real change in job numbers. this confusion between jobs and people working is a real pain.