This Morning’s Jobs Report and AJSN: Some Readjustment, A Chunk of Seasonality, More Latent Demand, and Real Progress

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary was supposed to feature 100,000 to 110,000 net new nonfarm payroll positions, a higher unemployment rate, and possibly some real tariff effects.  None of those things happened.  The new jobs once more far exceeded estimates with 147,000.  Seasonally adjusted joblessness dropped 0.1% to 4.1%.  The rest of the numbers looked for all the world like an ordinary good month, with the usual differences between May and June being dominant.

With that, unadjusted unemployment rose from 4.0% to 4.4%.  The count of adjusted unemployment fell 200,000 to 7.0 million, with those out long-term, or for 27 weeks or longer, up 100,000 to 1.6 million.  There were 100,000 fewer people working part-time for economic reasons, or maintaining short-hours arrangements while looking for longer ones, reaching 4.5 million.  The two measures of how common it is for Americans to be working or officially jobless, the labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio, lost 0.1% and held to get to 62.3% and 59.7%.  Average hourly private nonfarm payroll earnings tacked on 6 cents, a bit less than inflation, to $36.30. 

The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the measure showing how many new jobs could be quickly filled if we knew they would be easy to get, rose 650,000:

The largest changes were from unemployment, which almost covered the difference, from the number of discouraged, up a way-high 302,000, and from a reversal of last month’s jump in those not available to work now, which lost 332,000.  Compared with a year before, the AJSN gained 255,000, with the shrunken count of American expatriates more than offset by additional people wanting work but not looking for it for a year or more, discouraged, and unemployed.  The share of the AJSN from official joblessness gained 1.9% to 38.3%. 

How can I summarize this month’s data?  It was better than the usual seasonal worsening, with 482,000 more employed unadjusted, 927,000 fewer out of the labor force, and 815,000 fewer not interested.  Tariffs are still not clearly causing any disruption, and, with our president’s emphasis on making trade deals, may never.  Once again, the number of net new positions was far higher than we have any right to expect.  The turtle took a substantial step forward.