Deceptively Strong Jobs Report Shows Great Robustness Behind Headline Numbers, with Latent Demand, Per AJSN, Down 600,000

I can imagine the comments about this morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary.  Only 236,000 new jobs – indifferent.  Employment down 0.1% to 3.5% - per the BLS, “little changed.”  Nothing much happening – is the market slowing down?  All would be badly misleading. 

Yes, net new nonfarm payroll positions gained less than last month, and were a tiny bit below the published 240,000 estimate.  True, some other measures, including the count of long-term unemployed at 1.1 million, and those working part-time for economic reasons or keeping such work while looking for full-time propositions, still 4.1 million, went nowhere, and average private nonfarm payroll wages, up only 9 cents per hour to $33.18, did not keep up with even recently reduced inflation.  But others, including some likely to get little attention, exceeded that.

Of those, total employment, at 160,741,000, made another million-worker jump.  Seasonally unadjusted joblessness dropped 0.3%, a huge amount with limited seasonal significance, to 3.6%.  The count of unemployed, at 5.8 million, was off 100,000, and the adjusted unemployment rate above reflects an 0.1% drop, more meaningful than usual with the number of people saying they had no interest in work down another 100,000 on top of the million last time.  The two figures showing how common it is for Americans to be working or one step away, the employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, both gained, with the latter up 0.1% to 62.6% and the former jumping 0.3% - a lot for this statistic – to 60.4%. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing how many more positions could be quickly filled if all knew they would be easy to get, shaved over 600,000 to reach the following:

The AJSN components above show how stout our employment situation is, and how much better it is still getting.  Of the seven marginal attachment statuses shown in rows 2 through 8, only two – in school or training, and not available to work now – increased this time.  That means, as with fewer claiming no work interest, that Americans are choosing to reenter the job market – and with overall employment numbers rising to historic levels, we see that they are being successful. 

Compared with a year ago, the AJSN also shows we are still improving.  It was over 700,000 higher in March 2022, almost all of the difference from the marginal-attachment categories, especially that of people wanting work but not looking for it for the past 12 months. 

With Covid-19 not a factor and looking like it may never be again, what else can we say about this morning’s data?  It is tremendously solid.  The reality of a strong job market is not in doubtfully significant results such as the drop of advertised positions a few hundred thousand to 9.9 million, of which many, maybe most, are sitting unfilled for good reasons.  It is not in how inflationary the high jobs availability may or may not be – while prices are still increasing, every month’s reports seem to have new 12-month lows.  It is not in taking for granted new-positions figures consistently many times more than our modest population increases can absorb.  And it is not connected with the recession-soon predictions still getting press although moving further and further from reasonability.  These are banner times for work opportunities.  The turtle, once more, took a large step forward.