Economic Statistics for 2 Dec 11
Today’s economic statistical releases:
The big number today is the monthly employment situation. The BLS released the headline as "Unemployment rate falls to 8.6% in November; payroll employment rises by 120,000". The numbers behind the headline are less impressive. Actually, the headline isn’t all that impressive, considering that 120,000 new jobs is, at best, an anemic rate of job growth. Also, it’s the time of year when a fair amount of hiring is seasonal, for temporary Christmas jobs, which can make the employment situation look better than it actually is, despite the seasonal adjustments to the data employed by BLS. Looking deeper, the labor force participation rate continued to fall -0.2% to 64% as nearly half a million workers left the labor force.If the labor force participation rate was at the historical average of 66%, the unemployment rate would be 11.41%. 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, about the same as last November. The average workweek is unchanged at 34.3 hours, where it has been since September. Even worse, average earnings declined this month with the average hourly wage dropping 2 cents an hour to $23.18. So, I think we can say that the drop in the unemployment rate is mainly due to people leaving the labor force, as the rate of job creation is weak. Also, the lack of change in the workweek, and decline in wages implies that hiring pressure among firms is essentially non-existent as there has been no increase in the workweek for three months, and a glut of labor still exists as upward pressure on wages reversed this month. The only positive thing I can glean from this report comes from the household survey, where the number of respondents who are employed rose 278,000 to 140,580,000.
Monster.Com reports their employment index fell 4 points in November to 147 as online recruitment slowed.
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Dale Franks
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These daily stats don’t get many comments, Dale, but they’re a very good feature of the blog.
@martinmcphillips Thanks
I heard the report on the morning drive in to work. +120k jobs gets the unemployment number down to 8.6%? My BS detector pegged into the red. I guessed (correctly) that they did this via a declining workforce participation number.
ZH reports the number at 487k leaving the workforce.
We’re being lied to.
@tkc That’s the feeling I get too. I’ve come to expect that a month to two months from now, whatever number they told us today will be readjusted to the bad with the minimum amount of attention being paid to it.
Thank God Bush isn’t in power, think how much worse these numbers would be (and we’d be told they were worse, incessantly, all day, every day, above the fold on page 1, even if they weren’t really worse…)
Ditto what Martin said, and your analysis is much appreciated.
You economic statistical releases are very much appreciated.
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