The first impression many will have of this morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary was that it was a loser, since total nonfarm payroll employment, with a 23,000 loss, fell short of published estimates by 103,000 to 118,000.
That’s half
true. In support of that, the two
measures of how common working and being officially unemployed, the labor force
participation rate and the employment-population ratio, are, each dropped 0.1%
to 61.4% and 58.9%. The count of those
working part-time for economic reasons, or holding part-time jobs while looking
for full-time ones, gained 100,000 to 4.8 million, and average hourly private
nonfarm wages lost two cents to $37.62.
Otherwise, though, unadjusted joblessness stayed at 4.4%, and other
measures logged improvements: seasonally adjusted unemployment fell 0.1% to 4.1%,
there were 200,000 fewer adjusted jobless (now 6.9 million), and 100,000 fewer,
1.8 million, who had been looking for 27 weeks or longer.
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 and routine to get, came in at
167,000 lower as follows:
The largest
change was a 120,000 loss from those wanting work but not looking for it for at
least a year - no other differences exceeded 37,000. The share of the AJSN from those officially
unemployed edged up 0.2% to 38.7%.
Compared with a year before, the AJSN has dropped just over half a
million, with the largest subtractions from those jobless and those wanting but
not seeking for a year or more.
What happened
here? Nothing. The number of people not interested in work
rose 284,000, which explains the lower unemployment rate. Otherwise, it all looks light and variable,
with no trends, no big areas of concern, and no real changes. Likewise, no progress. The turtle stayed right where he was.
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