Monster Employment Index Reaches 2.5 Year High
The labor market news from today's Monster Employment report on online job demand and recruitment activity for June was a little more upbeat, with the Monster Employment Index increasing to the highest level since October 2008 (see chart above). Other highlights include:
1. The Monster Index grew at an annual rate of 4% in June, marking the 17th consecutive month of year-over-year growth.
2. By industry, 13 out of 20 sectors showed annual growth in online job demand, with the mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction industry leading the Monster Index with a 60% yearly increase, followed by utilities with a 25% annual gain. More evidence here that drill, drill, drill = jobs, jobs, jobs.
3. 26 of the 28 metro markets recorded positive annual growth in job demand for June, with Minneapolis leading (+24%) the country, followed by Detroit (+22%), Cleveland (+18%) and Cincinnati (+18%). The only metro area with an annual decline in job demand was Washington, D.C., which experienced a -7% decrease in June.
From Monster Worldwide Senior VP Jesse Harriott:
“It is encouraging to see that the Monster Employment Index U.S. has reached its highest level since October 2008 and has shown continued growth in the current economic cycle. Expansion in recruitment activity for the commerce sectors, like retail and wholesale trade in particular, is a positive indication of continued momentum in economic activity.”
Update: The chart below shows the strong correlation between: a) BLS private payroll jobs and b) the Monster Employment Index over the last 7.5 years.
31 Comments:
The Monster Index is growing but Year over Year it is falling, according to the Monster report. Hmm? Does this mean that overall hiring prospects are down except for a continuing core of skilled oriented positions in the private sector?
We have a couple of million electricians, pipefitters, concrete workers, carpenters, machinery operators, factory workers, and general laborers out of work. I'm not sure those people are big users of "Monster."
We can hope the BLS report was an outlier.
The Fed needs to do more, a lot more, to rev things up.
In Sweden, the central bank ran a QE program that bought bonds equal to about 25 percent of GDP. Here we did just 15 percent.
Sweden has had robust recovery. We have not.
Japan tried QE in 2003-2006 and right-winger John Taylor professed it a success. He gushed about it! Then the Bank of Japan, fearing inflation, backed off, and Japan went back down the tubes.
Fighting inflation during a recovery is like applying leeches to a patient with anemia.
You know how Karen Carpenter got herself into shape? It doesn't work for economies.
It wasn't an outlier. I've been calling this one ever since last Fall. The price of oil is killing the bottom third of our earners.
The Contagion is starting to migrate upward.
We can't continue to send a Billion Dollars/Day overseas, and get back $3.75 gasoline.
http://cr4re.com/charts/charts.html#category=Employment&chart=EmployRecessAlignedJune2011.jpg
you want ot see the failure of greenspan's (and now bernanke's) loose money policies?
there's the chart.
all 3 recessions since greenspan took over have been "outliers" in terms of job recovery.
they are the three slowest recoveries since ww2 by 100%.
that's an astounding figure.
he got away with it for the 2 shallow ones, but the loose money of 2000 turned an easily fixable bubble into this disaster.
fools like bunny will continue to misunderstand (i note you drop off every thread once i post the actual japanese numbers, but then pop up on the next one spewing the same lines with never a rebuttal) and fail to see that if you sell your debt abroad and have high net investment inflows, QE has the opposite effect it would if you were a closed system.
this is why rate ROSE during both qe periods.
it's not that it wasn't enough, it's that it caused more foreign selling. we got no growth, just bubbles.
this monster index is irrelevant.
job openings are only economically meaningful if you can fill them and that is not happening.
they are only a leading indicator if suitable candidates can be found, and they cannot.
every tech company i talk to is having trouble hiring. for the most part, roofers make poor semiconductor designers.
we have a skills mismatch driven by the construction collapse and our ruinous immigration policies and we have lower labor mobility due to underwater mortgages created by this failed experiment in promoting home ownership.
this monster index will continue to be irrelevant until those factors are addressed.
Buddy: Year over year the Monster Index increased, from 141 in June last year to 143 in June this year.
Morganovich,
"..every tech company i talk to is having trouble hiring."
It is a great time for workers with skills. Anecdotal evidence: my wife is an electrical engineer and she just interviewed with 4 different companies and received 4 offers.
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morganovich states:
"this monster index is irrelevant."
No, I disagree. It is showing where present and near future growth prospects are in the economy. The economy is not frozen or falling except for construction, which was the recipient of a tsunami of misallocated and leveraged capital for many years.
It is going to take a long time to work through this mis-allocation and the resultant deleveraging.
paul-
i agree. this is a great time to have those sorts of skills. demand is exploding and supply is ruthlessly tight.
all the social networking start ups are being forced to hire brand new college grads at 6 figure salaries and provide all sorts of perks (as in the late 90's).
they literally will take any warm body with even rudimentary computer skills, but we still cannot fill the jobs.
that never ends well. they wind up overpaying for low productivity and going BK. i had a front row seat for this running the tech group and VS arm of a fund in san francisco in the 90's. all the same stupidity is coming back.
it's interesting that such a labor bubble can persist while u6 is in the high teens. back then, we had u3 at 4%, which is extraordinarily low and thus, such a tight market seemed plausible, but with this kind of un and under employment, it shows severe skills and mobility issues.
i find it fascinating that the value of a degree in byzantine literature drops every year, while that of engineering and computers skyrockets, yet students are not flowing to those disciplines.
is it that they don't understand the economics? is it that they don't want to compete with the asian students and would rather drink beer? are they so poorly prepared that they CANNOT succeed in sciences?
i really wonder about that. you would think that such a discrepancy would be self correcting, but it actually seems to be getting worse.
Professor Perry, is the falling year over year line indicated a decline in the rate of growth YOY? I barely made it through stats and calc (duh).
"No, I disagree. It is showing where present and near future growth prospects are in the economy. "
that is where i think you are wrong.
it only shows demand for certain skillsets.
if that demand is not meetable because people have the wrong skills or cannot move, then this is not a sign of "growth prospects" but rather of forthcoming stagnation as the companies and the economy operate below potential due to unfilled jobs.
there is really no plausible way to claim that this index should be a leading indicator by more than about 3 months.
look at it 3 months back. it certainly did not do anything to predict this very aggressive slowdown.
i'd love to see that stats on how old these listings are (like days on the market in real estate) and on the percentage that get filled. i'll bet the former is way up and the latter way down.
Yes, there has been a decline in the annual growth rate for the Monster Index.
mark-
that chart shows a significantly deteriorating correlation in this recovery as well as a far larger gap than the last time.
far from making your case, it seems to further disprove it.
previously, it was nearly coincident (at least at that scale). now it lags far more and has much less effect.
compare the last time the monster index went from 120 to 140 to this time.
this index is not linked with nearly the sensitivity in time or magnitude as it was in the past.
Now, the dudes on CNBC are trying to convince each other that the Stock Market is now disconnected from employment.
Hoover was selling the same story in '29.
It was stupid then; it's stupid now.
"We have a couple of million electricians, pipefitters, concrete workers, carpenters, machinery operators, factory workers, and general laborers out of work"...
Those folks will probably stay that way if the EPA continues to have a say....
Why do assume the recession ended in early 2009?
some perspective:
that +18k number would have been -26k if they had not adjusted the may number down 44k.
payroll levels remain beneath those of 10 years ago despite 10% population growth.
the household survey (unemployment) showed a 445k month to month drop.
these really were VERY bad numbers.
"Today's jobs report was delivered to White House doorstep in a brown paper bag and on fire" - Henry Blodget
Morganovich says: "all 3 recessions since greenspan took over have been "outliers" in terms of job recovery...they are the three slowest recoveries since ww2 by 100%."
I'm surprised you didn't also blame Reagan or GWB.
From 1982-07, the U.S. had one of the greatest eras of prosperity.
Job growth was slower after the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions, in part, because higher skills were needed in the Information Revolution, while larger trade deficits had a negative effect on employment, but a positive effect on living standards.
The even slower recovery from the current recession is the result of Pelosi-Reid-Obama keeping one foot on the accelerator and the other foot on the brake, which is very expensive (and interior secretary Ken Salazar also assisted with "keep boot on the neck").
Morganovich says: "you want ot see the failure of greenspan's (and now bernanke's) loose money policies?"
In the past few decades, the only significant failure by the Fed is Bernanke proving he's not an inflation "dove" by tipping the country into recession in 2007.
The Fed needs to do more, a lot more, to rev things up.
Oh, puhleeze, give it up.
There's a thing called the "demand for money". It's very high now because people are afraid they'll lose it to government regulations, higher taxes or burdensome health care laws.
The Fed can't fix it.
Moreover, I may add, the Fed's job is to smooth-out business cycles, not smooth-out asset cycles, because sustainable growth of (goods & services) is optimal growth.
Even the heavily politicized figures of the BLS, unemployment is up and total employment is down. So what if Monster is up,they are not the universe of employment.
The Monster Index is like the BLS numbers totally useless in the real world...
Consider these instead: The Bistromath Economy
One of the few states where job creation is actually happening the EPA Parasites are trying screw them...
"From 1982-07, the U.S. had one of the greatest eras of prosperity."
no, it didn't.
from 1982 to 2000 we had a great period of prosperity.
the quick fix print money solution to the .com bubble combined with deliberate underestimation of inflation just created new bubbles.
2001-7 was not a prosperous time. it was a time of massive debt accumulation and mostly negative real growth if you use any honest metric for inflation.
the inertia of what reagan and volcker did carried us to 2000 when greespnan had his first serious decisions to make.
he blew it badly and we have had a decade of stagflation as a result.
even using the new BLS figures, it was a substandard period, and if you take out the "growth" funded by debt, you lose 30% of it and it really looks bad.
"Moreover, I may add, the Fed's job is to smooth-out business cycles"
wow. if you think that, no wonder you get such perverse notions.
the fed's job is to maintain price and currency stability, not to cheer lead for the economy.
also:
if their job is smoothing cycles (a terrible idea as they cannot ever really do it) then they have done a poor job.
where were they in 1998-2000? greenspan's "irrational exuberance" speech was when, 1996?
greensapn would never, ever take the punchbowl away no matter how out of hand the party got. that was the "greenspan put".
smoothing out the business cycles has to work both ways.
you can't just let it overheat and explode, then flood the market with money.
that's not managing a business cycle, that's throwing a huge blow out, then passing out speed the next morning to cure the hangovers.
"We can hope the BLS report was an outlier."
an outlier to what?
it fits with all the other data and has all year. this deterioration is everywhere.
outlier would imply that there is positive data to contradict it.
there isn't.
the only reason this number was even positive was that they cut last month's (terrible) figure by 44k jobs.
this is nothing like an outlier, it was dead center of what we have been seeing.
Morganovich, you make so many false assumptions, I don't know where to start. So, I'll just explain one of them.
Between 2000 and 2007 (after the structural bull market ended), the U.S. had a quick and massive "creative-destruction" process (and in a mild recession, mostly because of the Fed), which made not only Information-Age industries much more efficient, but also older industries.
Moreover, real assets soared, because assets increased much faster than liabilities, although liabilities increased substantially.
Furthermore, the U.S. became a "black hole" in the global economy, not only attracting goods and capital, but also attracting the owners of that capital themselves.
"2001-7 was not a prosperous time. it was a time of massive debt accumulation and mostly negative real growth if you use any honest metric for inflation"...
Well that's a pretty silly statement considering it has nothing substantial and credible to back it up...
I mean I think I know where m is coming from, the federal government interference in the housing market...
But I'm just guessing...
We know that the employment rates were better...
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