AJSN Data for 13 Months and 20 Years, and What it Means

This morning there is no federal government jobs data.  Many offices in Washington and elsewhere are shut down, with only three of 2,400 Bureau of Labor Statistics employees declared essential.  Accordingly, September’s American Job Shortage Number, showing latent demand for new work opportunities in the United States, will need to wait.

For this reason as well as the AJSN reaching its first anniversary last month, it is a good time to look at how that measure has progressed over the past year, and since 1994.  What has happened with it?  First, August 2012 through August 2013.

Month	AJSN	Month	AJSN	Month	AJSN
Aug-12	22,000,584	Jan-13	22,374,210	Jun-13	21,572,986
Sep-12	20,726,319	Feb-13	21,757,395	Jul-13	21,460,521
Oct-12	20,561,404	Mar-13	20,937,380	Aug-13	20,971,503
Nov-12	20,602,440	Apr-13	20,088,416
Dec-12	21,023,025	May-13	20,814,951

 

Since the AJSN is not seasonally adjusted, it fluctuates more than measures that are.  It is still within a range of about 10% from top to bottom.

The AJSN is the sum of 90% of the number of officially unemployed, plus shares from 5% to 90% of those with other employment statuses.  When we subtract the number of those officially jobless, what do we get? 

 

As we see, there has been some variation in the monthly data for other employment statuses, but they have generally increased.  Here is how much of it is from official unemployment and how much of it is from everything else:

 

Comparing non-seasonally-adjusted unemployment to the AJSN gets us the following:

 

We can measure per capita AJSN to compensate for the past year’s American population increase of about 220,000 per month, and for the share of those too young.  When we do that, we see:

Again, mainly just fluctuation, with, most recently, one missing job for about each 12 people old enough to work. 

Here are the same charts for the past 20 July’s:

Year (July)	AJSN	Year (July)	AJSN	Year (July)	AJSN	Year (July)	AJSN
1994	15.7 million	1999	13.6 million	2004	16.0 million	2009	23.3 million
1995	15.0 million	2000	13.3 million	2005	15.6 million	2010	23.5 million
1996	14.9 million	2001	14.2 million	2006	15.4 million	2011	23.4 million
1997	14.1 million	2002	16.2 million	2007	15.3 million	2012	22.5 million
1998	13.9 million	2003	16.7 million	2008	17.3 million	2013	21.5 million

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most important from these is how the AJSN minus unemployment level keeps rising, and how the per capita AJSN is still at recessionary levels. 

I will keep you posted on when the next month’s updates will be available.