Jobs And Joblessness -- September 1, 2022

Updates

September 2, 2022:

• The WSJ:
• jobs growth resilient so far this year despite a contraction in the overall economy
• employers created > 500,000 jobs in July, recovering all the 22 million jobs lost in early 2020 (pandemic)
• unemployment rate has now matched a 50-year low
• CNBC panel:
• forecast
• 290K; no number provided; 350K; 400K; R: 266K; SL: 250K (a little less than expected)
  
• consensus: 381K
• actual
• 315K
• 800K have come back into the labor force
• unemploymenet rate jumps to 3.7%; highest since February, 2022 (3.8%
• up 0.3% vs 0.4% forecast
• 62.4%; post-Covid high
• U-6: 7% 
  
• discussion after the numbers came out
• DOW futures: jump; up 145 points
• SL: something "goldilocks" about the number; particularly the 62.4$ participation rate
• "absolutely goldilocks" 
  
• blah, blah, blah,
• Rick:
• Fed: pain, pain, pain
• Biden administration: spend, spend, spend
• needs to be reconciled (won't happen -- certainly not in an election year)

Original Post

From The WSJ today, link here:

U.S. workers’ filings for unemployment benefits dropped last week to the lowest level in two months, suggesting employers are clinging to their workers in a tight job market.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, decreased to a seasonally adjusted 232,000 last week from a revised 237,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday.

“After trending higher for several months, initial claims have drifted lower, providing more evidence that labor market conditions remain tight despite fairly weak economic growth,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at forecasting-firm Oxford Economics.

From earlier today on the blog:

BLS unemployment numbers:

From August 28, 2022: lots of room to put "millions out of work” and still stay below 3% U-1 unemployment.

Jobs: link here.

Now, 9:42 p.m. CT, Thursday night, we'll add this:

How can the unemployment rate stay unchanged with the data we've been seeing this week?

This was from Politico four weeks ago: