THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION
The employment situation was mixed with the headline number, payroll employment adding 114,000 and the household report showing a gain of 873,000.
To a great extent the very large increase in the household survey appears to be just a make up for earlier weakness when the payroll report was showing larger gains than the household survey. On a year over year basis the two reports are showing very similar gains.
With the very large gain in the household survey the unemployment rate fell to 7.8%. It is now lower than when Obama took office. In the modern era every democratic administration saw the unemployment rate fall during their term in office while only one Republican saw the unemployment rate lower when they left office than it was when they took office. That was Reagan.
Interestingly, the unemployment rate for those with less than a high school showed a very large drop When I first saw the very large gain in the household survey I though it might be the seasonal adjustment creating a very large gain in education employment, but that was not the case.
The average work week increased from 34.4 to 34.5. Together with the gain in employment this generated a 0.6 % increase in aggregate hours worked.
Average hourly earnings increased from $23.51 to $23.58, or 0.3%.
Together this generated a 0.6% increase in average weekly earnings, the largest monthly gain in this cycle.
Well, at least now I understand better how those “appear to be overstated” GDP gains came about.
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my comment was removed because i misread izzo at the WSJ…
Hi Spence,
Looking at your first chart, the household survey seems to be in a disconnected pattern from payroll since Jan 2012. We don’t see such a lag and large recovery of the household to payroll in the prior years. Any thoughts?
If you look at the second chart that compares the growth rates of the two series the recent differences between the two series does not appear unusual.
The second chart eliminates much of the noise in the monthly data.
I’ll just tack the September Challenger, Gray & Christmas report in here, not too bad other than the weak hiring plans.
http://www.challengergray.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?PressUid=241
Juan
NSA, there were 574,000 more NFP jobs in september than august…the seasonal adjustment probably understated NFPs in september, because less school teachers went back to work this year than over past several years; on the other hand, that same phenomena accounted for the overstatement of NFPs in July, when unadjusted numbers indicated 1,204,000 less were employed than in June…