The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog): 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.