October: A Mixed Employment Report, AJSN Latent Demand Unchanged at 16.0 Million, and Two Things Still Clear

This morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary was not supposed to be especially critical or revealing – did it turn out that way?

We gained 261,000 net new nonfarm positions, well over the published consensus 200,000 estimate and still far more than our population increase could absorb, but most of the other numbers were unfavorable.  Seasonally adjusted and unadjusted unemployment both increased, 0.2% to 3.7% and 0.1% to 3.4% respectively, with 300,000 more officially jobless people and 100,000 additional, or 1.2 million, out for 27 weeks or longer.  The two measures showing how common it is for Americans to be either working or at the front line of not working, the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio, both lost 0.1% to reach 62.2% and 60.0%.  Average hourly private nonfarm payroll wages were $32.58, up 12 cents but once again less than inflation.  Improvers were the count of people working part-time for economic reasons, or doing that while thus far unsuccessfully seeking full-time employment, down 100,000 to 3.7 million, and the number employed, which, oddly in conjunction with these other results, rose 141,000 to 159,144.000. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the measure telling how many more positions could be quickly filled if all knew they were easy and routine to get, differed less than 8,000 from the previous month’s, as follows:

The largest increase came from the count of unemployed, offset by reductions in those discouraged and those wanting work but not available for it.  The share of the AJSN from those officially jobless grew 0.8% but stayed below one-third, reaching 31.6%.  Compared with a year ago, the AJSN has lost 1.3 million, about 90% of that from lower unemployment.

On the Covid-19 front, we saw great improvements from mid-September to mid-October.  Compared with September 16^th, the seven-day average of new cases on October 15^th fell 39% to 38,079, hospitalizations were off 18% to 26,679, and deaths dropped 16% to 375.  Helped by the new improved booster, the same measure of daily vaccinations soared 75% to 522,283. 

So what do we make of this still-crucial hodgepodge?  Lots of the results above worsened if not massively, but we once more gained employment, added many jobs, and have unemployment in the six-month 3.5% - 3.7% range – not a bad rut.  The two facts we cannot reasonably debate are that we are regularly getting more positions and have unemployment wildly inconsistent with being in a recession.  Although it was smaller, it was still indisputable that the turtle took another step forward.