Huge job gains last month


The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its monthly report and says that a whopping 538,000 jobs were added last month, about twice the expected number. They also revised upwards the jobs gains for the previous two months. This means that all the jobs that were lost during the pandemic have now been regained. The unemployment rate also edged down to 3.5%, another low number.

Since the GDP had declined for two straight quarters, there had been concerns that the economy was entering a period of recession. But this robust job growth contradicts that idea since in a traditional recession, people are thrown out of the labor market on a large scale. It also contradicts the idea that employers are finding it hard to get workers.

“The unexpected acceleration in non-farm payroll growth in July, together with the further decline in the unemployment rate and the renewed pick-up in wage pressure, make a mockery of claims that the economy is on the brink of recession,” said Michael Pearce, senior US economist for Capital Economics.

The US has now regained all 22 million jobs lost when the pandemic hit in 2020, the Labor Department said. The jobless rate has also returned to its pre-pandemic level, hovering at 50-year lows.

For Hispanic and Latino workers, the 3.9% jobless rate in July was the lowest since record keeping began in 1973.

That more people are getting jobs is undoubtedly a good thing. It is not just hard economically when people cannot get jobs and earn a living, it can be psychologically devastating for people to try to get jobs and fail, making them feel useless.

Product manager Ian Charles lost his job a few weeks ago when his financial technology company announced a wave of cuts, citing the shift in investor sentiment that was making it harder for start-ups to raise money.

The 33-year-old was surprised – and initially, panicked, remembering how difficult his job search had been a few years earlier. But this time, he said, “it’s a totally different ballgame.”

“People have really been coming out in droves on LinkedIn – both people I actually know from grad school and former colleagues to just random recruiters,” he said.

He said he felt confident he would have a new job lined up in a few weeks.

“I was panicking at the start … but this time around I’ve seen in a month how much easier it’s been to get traction,” he said. “Opportunities keep coming, which is really weird to me because everyone keeps talking about how we’re headed for a recession and things could be slowing down, but I don’t see it reflected on the ground.”

Wages are also rising, another good thing, going up by 5.2% over the last year, but this is tempered with the fact that inflation is rising faster, meaning that their real income is declining. That is not good but having your wages rise is satisfying on an emotional level even if the increase gets eaten away by higher prices so that there is a net decline in real income. It likely feels better to get a larger paycheck than to have a decline in the nominal wages by the same amount with inflation flat. This article looks at some of the factors as to why wages do not keep pace with inflation.

The average number of hours worked per week has not changed. There are concerns that the large increase in jobs may be due to people having to take two or more jobs to maintain the same standard of living that they could formerly have with just one job. That would not be good but I have not seen much support for that idea.

Comments

  1. consciousness razor says

    There are concerns that the large increase in jobs may be due to people having to take two or more jobs to maintain the same standard of living that they could formerly have with just one job. That would not be good but I have not seen much support for that idea.

    Here you go: 559,000 more in July were working multiple jobs, compared to July 2021. [7,572k-7,013k=559k] It was 382,000 more men and 177,000 more women.

    It went from 4.6% of the total employed to 4.8% or about one out of twenty. 7.6 million is between the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston metro areas (the fourth and fifth largest in the country), or if you like, a little more than the Minneapolis and San Diego metro areas combined (the sixteenth and seventeenth largest).

  2. consciousness razor says

    Here’s a somewhat better table where it’s also broken down by age, race and marital status.

    And this one shows a different set of numbers (seasonally adjusted), but at least breaks things down on a month by month basis….
    July 2021: 7,084k
    Aug.: 7,035k (-49k)
    Sept.: 7,038k (+3k)
    Oct.: 6,984k (-54k)
    Nov.: 7,065k (+81k)
    Dec.: 7,395k (+330k)
    Jan. 2022: 7,486k (+91k)
    Feb.: 7,431k (-55k)
    March: 7,370k (-61k)
    April: 7,539k (+169k)
    May: 7,302k (-237k)
    June: 7,541k (+239k)
    July: 7,633k (+92k)

  3. billseymour says

    Can anybody explain to me why the total number of people employed is meaningful without regard to the nature of the employment?

    It’s like Amtrak’s “ridership” figures which report just butts in seats but say nothing about the revenue derived from various passengers.

  4. consciousness razor says

    Of course the resident YEC would link to the debt clock, which is worse than a broken clock, since it can’t even tell you the right time twice a day.

  5. consciousness razor says

    Can anybody explain to me why the total number of people employed is meaningful without regard to the nature of the employment?

    It’s not. To their credit, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does publish tons of data and analysis on a regular basis about various types of work, the number of hours people get, whether they have multiple jobs, and on and on…. More detailed info about real working conditions, union activity, and whatnot is less forthcoming, but it’s something at least.

    However, the media, including social media, mostly just cares about having a (“good” or “bad”) headline.

  6. says

    Oh looky, another Retrumplitarian tax-cut-maniac is complaining about government debt. Bless his little heart. Yo, txpipsqueak, if government debt is such a horrible thing, why do you and your party keep on insisting on cutting taxes? Was government debt this bad back when “tax-and-spend liberals” were in power (as opposed to “borrow-and-spend reactionaries”)?

  7. txpiper says

    “the debt clock, which is worse than a broken clock”
    .
    If you place your cursor over any given display box, it will tell you the source for the figures that are showing; US Treasury, Federal Reserve, OMB, CBO, US Census, etc.

  8. consciousness razor says

    If you flip the switch in your brain to the “ON” position, it will start functioning appropriately. Then, maybe you could begin to understand why any of those figures might matter with regard to something or other (the current jobs report?), and perhaps one day you’ll even have something substantive to say about one or more of those things. Until then….

    By the way, much of that data — e.g., the population, the size of the workforce and those not in the workforce, number of bankruptcies, number of retirees, median home prices, commodity prices, etc. — is not precise or up-to-the-minute, like some of the other rapidly-changing “real-time” figures are (at least ostensibly) supposed to be.

    Anyway, it’s not a clock. That was the joke. Well, at the risk of over-explaining it, the joke is more like this: are you too dumb to understand what a “clock” is? Then you must be a fucking debt/deficit hawk.

  9. txpiper says

    clock | kläk |
    noun
    a mechanical or electrical device for measuring time, indicating hours, minutes, and sometimes seconds, typically by hands on a round dial or by displayed figures.
    • (the clock) time taken as a factor in an activity, especially in competitive sports: they play against the clock | her life is ruled by the clock.
    • informal a measuring device resembling a clock for recording things other than time, such as a speedometer, taximeter, or odometer.

    =
    …but it’s something at least.

  10. says

    I’ve never heard of a speedometer, taximeter, odometer, dashboard or scoreboard being called a “clock.” I guess if you can’t even be half-right in the subject you deflect to, I shouldn’t expect you to ever address my questions.

  11. consciousness razor says

    I’ve never heard of a speedometer, taximeter, odometer, dashboard or scoreboard being called a “clock.”

    Perhaps this is part of a new wedge strategy for creationists….

    (P1) If everything were clocks, because they say so,
    (P2) and since there’s no way to meaningfully synchronize a pendulum clock, the rotation of the Earth or any other such thing with (for instance) a speedometer or the debt clock,

    then
    (C1) you can’t dispute it when they say anything whatsoever about the age of the universe.
    (C2) Therefore, it’s about 6,000-10,000 years old.

    Teach the controversy!

  12. blf says

    @12, From memory, “(mileage) clock” used to be used rather frequently in the UK for “odometer” (no idea if that is still the case, presuming my memory is correct-ish). Which is confusing, as falsifying an odometer is known as “clocking” in both the UK and the States.

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