Friday, August 5, 2011

Payroll Employment Rose by 117,000

What's most fascinating about this number is that the private sector continues to add jobs, while jobs in the government sector at the state and local level continue to shrink. (Though much of the decline at the state level in the government sector is temporary and the result of a government shutdown in Minnesota)

That said, the gains in the private sector are likely distorted thanks to continue Federal Reserve money printing (Note the gains in the inflation sectors such as mining). There are also likely distortions in the healthcare sector as a consequence of government influence in that sector.

Health care employment grew by 31,000 in July. Ambulatory health care services and hospitals each added 14,000 jobs over the month. Over the past 12 months,health care employment has grown by 299,000.

Retail trade added 26,000 jobs in July. Employment in health and personal care stores rose by 9,000 over the month with small increases distributed among several other retail industries. Employment in retail trade has increased by 228,000 since a recent low in December 2009.

Manufacturing employment increased in July (+24,000); nearly all of the
increase was in durable goods manufacturing. Within durable goods, the motor vehicles and parts industry had fewer seasonal layoffs than typical for July,contributing to a seasonally adjusted employment increase of 12,000. Manufacturing has added 289,000 jobs since its most recent trough in December 2009, and durable goods manufacturing added 327,000 jobs during this period.

In July, employment in mining rose by 9,000; virtually all of the gain (+8,000) occurred in support activities for mining. Employment in mining has increased by 140,000 since a recent low in October 2009.

Employment in professional and technical services continued to trend up in July (+18,000). This industry has added 246,000 jobs since a recent low in March 2010. Employment in temporary help services changed little over the month and has shown little movement on net so far this year.

Elsewhere in the private sector, employment in construction, transportation
and warehousing, information, financial activities, and leisure and hospitality changed little over the month.

Government employment continued to trend down over the month (-37,000). Employment in state government decreased by 23,000, partly due to a partial shutdown of the Minnesota state government. But still, employment in local government continued to wane over the month.

Bottom line, while many are predicting a double dip recession, unemployment, which tends to lag is even starting to show fairly broad-based upticks.

12 comments:

  1. http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/07/incredibly-bullish-unemployment-numbers.html

    Well done, Bob! ;)

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  2. On the whole, best number we've had in a while. While Europe is a disaster, I don't think we are infected with their crap the way they were with ours 2 years ago. Things aren't great here by any stretch, but this is the first time in 3-4 years that I'm not a huge bear. I thinks things are stabilizing somewhat. If we can keep housing's wobbly legs under it then maybe we can eek our way out of this over the next few years...and if we can get Ron Paul into the White House...look out above!

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  3. @Axios

    I'll have to disagree with you. Sure, Europe is not doing well, but they are still way better than us. You said that you're not such a huge bear - what is there to be bullish about? Markets are going up only because of money printing - there is NO recovery.

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  4. You're kidding right? The BLS statistics are a joke.

    374,000 people have magically disappeared from the labor force since last month.

    Over 2 million have disappeared since last year.

    What did they all hit retire or hit powerball? More like they have completely given up hope and now are no longer counted.

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  5. @Anonymous - You are completely wrong. Europe is 10x worse than us. I know Europe quite well and as bad as things are here, they are far worse there. And I didn't say I was bullish, I just said I wasn't as big of a bear I have been in the last few years. There's a difference between being bullish/bearish and recognizing a piece of good information.

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  6. @Axios,

    As a native European now living in the States, I'll have to disagree with you once again. The Euro is not the world's reserve currency and ECB will never print as much of it as Fed does with dollars. European still has a production sector - unlike the U.S.. And there are numerous other examples I could bring.

    You see - EU is breaking up. It will not be divided into east and west anymore - it is south against the north. If you take a look at the Northern European countries - they are very-very strong. There are countries with practically no debt - there are countries with budget surpluses. There are countries which are lowering taxes, cutting spending and decreasing the size of the government. There are no healthcare plans or ridicules pension systems.

    Sure Greece, Italy, Spain, etc are bad, but this is not the entire Europe. This is just a small portion of it, which; of course, have made quite a big mess. There is no easy way out of it and it is likely that it will take EU and Euro down with it. But all in all, we'll probably see the dollar crash and burn first (along with the U.S. economy).

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  7. These numbers are totally rigged. They seem to be playing with the Labor Participation rate. We are at historical lows. What do think Bob?

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  8. Lowest employment ratio since 1983.

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  9. Tread Free is right. Bob, look deeper at the employment ratios and discouraged workers. We'll have to wait until September to see if there were any substantial revisions.

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  10. This means the entire economy is moving toward people sitting around on food stamps going to get their "free" medical care for their government-approved diets that cause diabetes.

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  11. 117K, or 154K, is a terribly weak number in the current context; it should be 3x greater.
    There is no honest way to spin this as a positive in an absolute or appropriate relative
    sense.

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  12. You would have to have roughly 254k+ gains every month until January 2013 to erase the job losses under the "recession".

    Too bad we're not doing another census for 9 more years,

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