April Household Employment Jumps by +120,000
It won't receive as much attention as the nonfarm payroll employment data (-563,000 jobs), but the more comprehensive measure of employment (household data) showed an increase of 120,000 jobs in April (see Tables A and A-1 in today's report) to 141,007,000. As the chart above shows, April marked the first monthly job gain in a year, and follows 11 consecutive months of job losses.
Update on the difference between payroll and household employment: "Both the payroll and household surveys are needed for a complete picture of the labor market. The payroll survey provides a highly reliable gauge of monthly change in nonfarm payroll employment. The household survey provides a broader picture of employment including agriculture and the self employed." Read more here from the BLS.
10 Comments:
The threshold for a statistically significant change in the household survey is about 400,000. The supposed green shoot is a wilted weed.
There have been no private nonfarm net payroll jobs created this decade. Zip.Zilch.Nada. Chart is here. It's unbelievable how poorly the labor market has performed since the millennium.
Light up that green shoot in your pipe but don't inhale.
If you reference Table B-1 of the report it shows that almost all employment gains are government and healthcare employees. I admit to being a poor detail person but it appears that the administration can take credit for employment gains and GDP gains (healthcare expenditures) by consistently running up more deficits. Let us all push to rebuild the private sector and stop this charade.
Mark,
Maybe a dumb question from an amteur like me, but what is the difference between household data and nonfarm payroll employment data?
Thanks
Mr. Perry, this is quite an interesting way of looking at today's data. That's what I love about data and a certain subset of academic economists. There's always hope. What I have seen is nothing more than pure disaster. But you've found the golden nugget. Truly this is genius...
Wow! Based on all the gloom here, I must be seeing different economic data than everyone else. Almost all of what I'm seeing across the economic spectrum is showing either outright improvement or, at the very least, things not getting worse. Am I missing something?
BTW, Anonymous: every time I click on your chart link, I get a message saying, "The webpage cannot be found." Are you sure your chart even exists, or are you taking a few hits of those green shoots yourself? ;^)
Richard,
"what is the difference between household data and nonfarm payroll employment data?"
They are just two different surveys. The paroll survey has larger sample and therefore has less variance and more accuracy, but only measures jobs at employers (its a survey of payrolls). This is whewre the jobs number comes from. The household survey has a smaller sample size and it therefore more variable but it sureys households so it picks up self employed people. This is also the surbey where the unemployment rate comes from. So the two different surveys is why in a given month you sometimes have the "jobs" number going one way and the unemployment rate going the other way - because they come from different surveys with different margins of error.
I must be seeing different economic data than everyone else.Anecdote is not data.
Are you sure your chart even exists, or are you taking a few hits of those green shoots yourself?The only bong hits inhaled on this blog are by the blogger himself. And I warned him not to inhale the stinky household survey data weed. :-)
It does seem to be a funky link. Plug and play here with the BLS data to satisfy your curiousity and maybe you can link it back yourself.
BTW, this is now officially the worst post-WWII recession as measured by cumulative decline in nonfarm payroll employment. You could plug and play here.
10:50am anonymous:
Since the baby boomers are retiring, wouldn't we expect to see a levelling off of laborers? Isn't this the problem behind the entitlements, that for the foreseeable future, the population is growing, but the labor pool isn't?
"There have been no private nonfarm net payroll jobs created this decade. Zip.Zilch.Nada. Chart is here. It's unbelievable how poorly the labor market has performed since the millennium"...
Well here's your chance to hire a people and change some of that...
Sadly though if one looks at federal, state, and local governments, theyre not suffering much in the way of job loss...
Gotta love that socialism...:-(
Adding in a synchronized global recession harming exports gives a double-barreled shot.
The 2008 recession began 7 years after the 2001 capital goods recession,
so there were plenty of excesses just in those 7 years to work off.
So much of life is cyclical. If we pull together and follow Barry’s advice above to preserve
the system but remember that what are being called “banks” in this debate are very large
holding companies that own as part of their holdings depository institutions (real banks),
then we won’t cry if the holding companies vanish.
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