Employment Situation
This was one of the better employment reports of this cycle. Private payroll employment grew 246,00
while government employment fell about 10,000 for a net gian of of 236,000. The household survey also showed a nice gain of 170,000.
On a year over year change basis both series are showing nice gains.
You would never know it to listen to the news, but employment in this cycle continues to better than in the previous cycle.
The workweek also increased 0.1% and the index of aggregate hours worked grew 0.5% of all workers and 0.9% for production workers. The index is now back to the trend established early in the cycle.
Average hourly earnings growth has bottomed and are starting to move up very nicely.
Hmm. Both you and Tim Duy leave out the other large increase this month: NILF.
Agreed, certainly, that it’s a better recovery than the post-Nov 2001 one–though quibble that the W recovery was based in Government jobs, and this one has been destroyed by eliminating Government jobs–but that doesn’t make it a good recovery. (My children and your grandchildren will have different mileage.)
Thanks Spencer,
Third chart – sure looks like a multicyclic tendency of decline for both hh and payroll employment – or is that simply my eyesight……
Hi Spencer,
Via Digby site, Planet Money has a chart suggesting we are about 10 million jobs short of where all the other recoveries after five years have gone.
“In previous postwar recoveries, the number of jobs was about 7 percent above its previous peak by this point, on average.
In other words, if this had been a typical recession and recovery, the U.S. economy would now have roughly 10 million more jobs than it did at the previous peak. In fact, there are now three million fewer jobs.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/15/172116698/the-scariest-job-chart-ever-isnt-scary-enough
Any thoughts?