Really encouraging jobs numbers today
Ezra Klein ?@ezraklein 5mReally encouraging jobs numbers today: http://bit.ly/1pZuxcO
The economy added 288,000 new jobs in June, according to the latest release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was well above economists' pre-release consensus forecast. The BLS also added a net of 29,000 jobs thanks to revisions to the April and May numbers.
Meanwhile, in the separate household survey the unemployment rate fell to 6.1 percent.
Today's other jobs number is also good news
Today is the total solar eclipse of jobs days — a rare day when both initial jobless claims and the monthly unemployment report come out simultaneously. At the same time the government reported the economy added a strong 288,000 jobs in June, it also reported that the number of Americans who filed initial claims for unemployment insurance was at 315,000 for the week ending June 28.
That figure held relatively steady from the week before, when initial claims totaled 313,000. And though weekly initial claims data can be volatile, the smoother 4-week moving average also only shifted up by 500, to 315,000. That smoother moving average makes it easier to see trends than the raw numbers, and it shows improvement even in the first half of 2014. Since then, it has declined from nearly 350,000.
This level of claims is right around where claims were before the financial crisis hit. It is also a vast improvement over the middle of the recession, when claims were more than double where they are now.
Jason Furman ?@CEAChair 1m
Private employment has increased in 52 consecutive months, the longest streak on record http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/07/0
The Democrats ?@TheDemocrats 3m
This is what #progress looks like:
= new reply since forum marked as read
Jobs Report: 5th straight monthly job gain of more than 200,000 — the best such stretch since the late 90s tech boom. http://n.pr/1qT7wcV
sfpelosi ?@sfpelosi 7m
Jobs report would be even better if #GOP would pass Democrats' #MakeItInAmerica agenda + stop firing public employees.
____ As always, there are caveats. June’s employment gains were mostly in part-time jobs, and the number of people working part time because they couldn’t find full-time work rose by 275,000. Much of the job growth was concentrated in low-paying sectors, such as restaurants and retail, while hiring in the better-paying construction sector continued to lag. The number of people out of work six months or more fell to a five-year low, but, at least as of May, not because the long-term unemployed were actually finding jobs.
Wages are up but hours are flat: Average earnings are up 48 cents an hour over the past year, a 2 percent increase. That probably means wages were roughly flat after adjusting for inflation. (We’ll get June inflation data later this month.) Meanwhile the average workweek — the number of hours worked by the average hourly worker — was flat for the fourth consecutive month. Taken together, the earnings and hours figures suggest employers still aren’t having much trouble finding workers; if they were, they’d be boosting pay or asking their existing employees to work longer hours.
Better odds for the unemployed: About 22 percent of the unemployed found jobs in June, the highest share of the recovery. But for the 49th time in the past 50 months, more jobseekers gave up looking than found work. The numbers make it hard to get a clear read on whether the unemployed are becoming more optimistic. The number of “discouraged workers” — people who aren’t actively looking for a job because they don’t think they can find one — is down sharply over the past year. But fewer people are rejoining the job market to look for work, and the share of the population that’s working or looking for work remains at a three-decade low.
the rest of the good news, apart from the worst fivethirtyeight could imagine: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-job-market-is-the-strongest-its-been-since-before-the-recession/
