Good and bad in the June jobs report.
You all know I love revisions. Guess what. We have positive revisions for once. I am not kidding:
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for April was revised up by 11,000, from +147,000 to +158,000, and the change for May was revised up by 5,000, from +139,000 to +144,000. With these revisions, employment in April and May combined is 16,000 higher than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)
That’s YUGE in my opinion.
Now we get into the wishy washy area.
Nonfarm payroll employment went up by 147,000 in June. That sounds good, right?
Well, government employment went up at the state and local level while federal government jobs went down:
Government employment rose by 73,000 in June. Employment in state government increased by 47,000, largely in education (+40,000). Employment in local government education continued to trend up (+23,000). Job losses continued in federal government (-7,000), where employment is down by 69,000 since reaching a recent peak in January. (Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)
State and local government jobs make up almost half of the jobs in the June report.
I love that the federal government continues to lose jobs but state and local government jobs are still government jobs.
Manufacturing employment declined again, while other private sectors remained relatively stagnant. That’s not good.
It’s not shocking, though, since the unemployment rate (4.1%) and number of unemployed people (7.0 million) barely changed in June:
In June, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 190,000 to 1.6 million, largely offsetting a decrease in the prior month. The long-term unemployed accounted for 23.3 percent of all unemployed people. (See table A-12.)The labor force participation rate changed little at 62.3 percent in June, and the employment population ratio held at 59.7 percent. (See table A-1.)The number of people employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.5 million, changed little in June.These individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-8.)The number of people not in the labor force who currently want a job was essentially unchanged at 6.0 million in June. These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job. (See table A-1.)
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