This morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary was supposed to be nondescript, with 65,000 net new nonfarm payroll positions, mostly better than September’s stinker but not massively. Was it?
That jobs
figure came in at an even 100,000 more than the consensus 165,000 estimate I saw. Both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted unemployment
improved 0.1%, to reach 4.1% and 3.9%.
There were still 7.1 million jobless, rounded to the nearest
100,000. The count of long-term unemployed,
those out for 27 weeks or longer, gained 100,000 to 2.0 million, with 300,000
more working part-time for economic reasons, or thus far unsuccessfully seeking
full-time positions, which took that to 4.8 million. The two measures showing how common it is for
Americans to be working or in the generally most poised category otherwise, the
employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, each got
0.1% better to rise to 59.3% and 61.9%.
Average hourly private nonfarm payroll earnings went well past
inflation, up 19 cents to $38.00.
The American
Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the Royal Flush Press metric showing how many additional
positions could be quickly filled if all knew they would be easy to get, lost
74,000 as follows:
The largest improvement
was in officially jobless, dropping the measure by 121,500, with no others over
34,000. In the opposite direction were
those wanting work but not looking for it for a year or more and those
discouraged, adding 52,000 and 51,300. The
share of the AJSN from those technically unemployed was 37.0%, down 0.5%. Compared with just over a year with September
2025’s data, the AJSN dropped over 500,000, mostly from lower official
unemployment.
What happened
this time? Adding some secondary numbers
- the unadjusted number of employed up 742,000 to 164,183,000; those not in the
labor force off half a million to 104,725,000; and those saying they have no
interest in work down 558,000 to 99,066,000 - makes it clear. It was an excellent month for new positions,
but not so good for those trying to get them.
People perceived the labor market’s strength and joined in, but remained
without work - either that, or they replaced others who did not get back
in. Along with that, the worsenings in
people working part-time for economic reasons and those out long-term tell us
that there are too many have-nots in our labor scheme. Are there structural reasons for that which
have strengthened recently? As the job
market is not only for those already benefiting from it, we need, somehow, to
make it easier for the ever-substantial ranks of Americans who want to work to
get there. In the meantime, though,
since the gains were so favorable, the turtle did manage a significant step
forward.
