Not pretty, but as usual, to be taken with some skepticism. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses two surveys to put together these employment reports, one of businesses and one of households. The response rates are low and there are constant revisions, and another reminder that the reported changes are well within the margin of error give the huge employment base in the US. Supposedly we lost 23,000 jobs in July, and the prior two months were revised downward by a total of 103,000 jobs. That comes from the business survey. Meanwhile the household survey shows a small drop in the unemployment rate., largely due to fewer people in the work force. In addition to the usual caveats, we are still working through the end of limitless illegal immigration and the voluntary and involuntary departure of those who came here illegally.
The really good news is that government employment fell by 53,000 jobs; the bad news is it was concentrated in local school jobs and will likely reverse in the fall. In the private, or real work, sector, modest job declines occurred in hospitality, finance and retail. The hospitality job losses are likely due to layoffs of people hired for the World Cup surge. Modest gains were seen in construction and health care. Wage growth was slow, which I don’t view as a positive, but means little labor pressure on inflation. The best think we can say is that the private sector is gaining jobs, albeit slowly. (BLS Report)
Some miscellaneous notes. 25% of all unemployed persons are “long-term” unemployed; I believe these people are slackers who have no interest in working and really shouldn’t be counted in the labor force, or better yet, should be removed from any government benefits so they have to work. We need more legal immigrants and native-born people working in the US. We also have another 5.9 million people who claim they want to work but aren’t actively looking for a job. That is a joke, and these are more slackers. Part-time jobs rose, full-time ones fell. On the AI watch, there has been some decline in financial jobs, where you might expect an impact, but not much in business and professional services or IT. I think in the end very few jobs will be lost to AI. Manufacturing is essentially unchanged over the last year, so much for the BS that tariffs would cause more manufacturing jobs in the US.
