Today’s jobs data was a mixed bag; although you’d never guess there was positive news by reading the headlines. Most business news websites are displaying titles something like:
Jobless rate rises to 4-year high of 5.7 percent
While this is true, Bill Conerly over at Businomics made some very intriguing points about the labor market, and even predicted that the labor markets will tighten up by next year.
His primary point is that jobs are being lost, but fewer people are quitting as well. Of course I am a technical analyst, so I’m not sure how Bill made the predictions about labor becomming more difficult to hire next year, but I will be tracking the employee quits vs. jobless rate and analyzing how these numbers correspond to the moves in the overall market.
Bureau Of Labor Statistics
The following table on the monthly employment data does show some interesting points. The first and most publicized is clearly the jump in unemployment. However, taking a look at the other numbers is somewhat contradictory.
First, the actual change in payroll data shows that few jobs are being lost month over month. Some of the early February numbers could be related to seasonal employment. Another point that I see in this chart is that inflation seems to be fairly neutral based on average hourly earnings. CPI is up, but that’s mostly driven by commodities.
| Data Series | Back Data |
Feb 2008 |
Mar 2008 |
Apr 2008 |
May 2008 |
June 2008 |
July 2008 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
4.8 | 5.1 | 5.0 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 5.7 | |
|
|
-83 | -88 | -67 | -47 | (P) -51 | (P) -51 | |
|
|
17.81 | 17.87 | 17.89 | 17.95 | (P) 18.00 | (P) 18.06 | |
|
|
0.0 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 1.1 | ||
|
|
0.3 | (P) 1.0 | (P) 0.2 | (P) 1.4 | (P) 1.8 | ||
|
|
0.2 | (R) 3.1 | (R) 2.8 | (R) 2.6 | (R) 2.6 | ||
|
Footnotes |
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