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Jobs rebound by 4.8 million but huge headwinds remain

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Jobs rebound by 4.8 million but huge headwinds remain

Nonfarm payrolls expanded by a record 4.8 million but that leaves another 15 million to go.

The BLS Employment Report for June shows employment rose by 4.8 million and the unemployment rate fell to 11.1%

Initial Reaction

Both numbers are better than the consensus.

The Bloomberg Econoday consensus jobs estimate was +3.0 million and the unemployment rate consensus was 12.4%.

The BLS said that errors that plagued the March, April, and May reports were not as bad this month.

BLS Error Rate

As was the case in March, April, and May, household survey interviewers were instructed to classify employed persons absent from work due to temporary, coronavirus-related business closures as unemployed on temporary layoff. BLS and Census Bureau analyses of the underlying data suggest that this group still included some workers affected by the pandemic who should have been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff.

The degree of misclassification declined considerably in June. BLS and Census Bureau staff have been reviewing survey responses that might have been misclassified. The misclassification hinges on a question about the main reason people were absent from their jobs. If people who were absent due to temporary, pandemic-related closures were recorded as absent due to “other reasons,” they could have been misclassified. When interviewers record a response of “other reason,” they also add a few words describing that other reason. The review of these brief descriptions found that the share of responses that may have been misclassified was much smaller in June than in prior months. BLS and the Census Bureau are continuing to investigate the misclassification and are taking additional steps to address the issue.

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical June) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 1 percentage point higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, this represents the upper bound of our estimate of misclassification and probably overstates the size of the misclassification error.

Job Revisions

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for April was revised down by 100,000,  from -20.7 million to -20.8 million, and the change for May was revised up by 190,000, from +2.5 million to +2.7 million. With these revisions, employment in April and May combined was 90,000 higher than previously reported.

BLS Jobs Statistics at a Glance

Nonfarm Payroll: +4.800,000 - Establishment Survey

Employment: +4,940,000 - Household Survey

Unemployment: -3,235,000 - Household Survey

Baseline Unemployment Rate: -2.2 to 11.1% - Household Survey

U-6 unemployment: -3.2 to 18.0% - Household Survey

Civilian Non-institutional Population: +157,000

Civilian Labor Force: +1,705,000 - Household Survey

Not in Labor Force: -1,547,000 - Household Survey

Participation Rate: +0.7 to 61.5% - Household Survey

Part-Time Jobs

Total Part-Time Work Change: -1,571.000

Involuntary Part-Time Work: -1,605,000 - Household Survey

Voluntary Part-Time Work: +2,743,000 - Household Survey

Don't try to make sense of those numbers as they never add up. I list them as reported.

BLS Employment Report Statement

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 4.8 million in June, and the unemployment rate  declined to 11.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. These improvements in the labor market reflected the continued resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed in March and April due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it. In June, employment in leisure and hospitality rose sharply. Notable job gains also occurred in retail trade, education and health services, other  services, manufacturing, and professional and business services.

Unemployment Rate – Seasonally Adjusted

Jobs rebound by 4.8 million but huge headwinds remain

The above Unemployment Rate Chart is from the BLS. Click on the link for an interactive chart.

Month-Over Month Changes by Job Type

Jobs rebound by 4.8 million but huge headwinds remain

Hours and Wages

Average weekly hours of all private employees declined 0.2 hours to 34.5 hours. Average weekly hours of all private service-providing employees decline 0.2 hours to 33.6 hours. Average weekly hours of manufacturers rose 0.3 hours to at 39.2 hours.

Average Hourly Earnings of All Nonfarm Workers fell $0.35 to $29.37.

The numbers are distorted because more higher-paid workers kept their jobs than lower-paid employees.

Average hourly earnings of Production and Supervisory Workers fell $0.29 to $24.74. 

Year-Over-Year Wage Growth

All Private Nonfarm rose from $27.96 to $29.37.

Production and supervisory rose from $23.47 to $24.74.

These numbers are distorted because more higher-paid workers kept their jobs than lower-paid employees.

For a discussion of income distribution, please see What’s “Really” Behind Gross Inequalities In Income Distribution?

Birth Death Model

Starting January 2014, I dropped the Birth/Death Model charts from this report. 

For those who follow the numbers, I retain this caution: Do not subtract the reported Birth-Death number from the reported headline number. That approach is statistically invalid. 

BLS Covid-19 Statement on the Birth-Death Model

The widespread disruption to labor markets due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential impact to the birth-death model have prompted BLS to both revisit research conducted in the aftermath of the Great Recession (2008-2009) and incorporate new ideas to account for changes in the number of business openings and closings. Two areas of research have been implemented to improve the accuracy of our birth-death model in the CES estimates. These adjustments will better reflect the net effect of the contribution of business births and deaths to the estimates. These two methodological changes are the following:

  1. A portion of both reported zeros and returns from zero in the current month from the sample were used in estimation to better account for the fact that business births and deaths will not offset.

  2. Current sample growth rates were included in the net birth-death forecasting model to better account for the changing relationships between business openings and closings.

BLS will determine on a monthly basis if the adjusted birth-death model described here continues to be necessary. We will disclose these changes each month in the Employment Situation news release. All months in the tables of net birth-death forecasts on this page include footnotes for any month in which a regressor was used to supplement the forecasts.

The Birth-Death model is essentially garbage but we likely will not find how distorted this is until the annual revisions next year.

Table 15 BLS Alternative Measures of Unemployment

Jobs rebound by 4.8 million but huge headwinds remain

​Table A-15 is where one can find a better approximation of what the unemployment rate really is.

The official unemployment rate is 11.1%. However, if you start counting all the people who want a job but gave up, all the people with part-time jobs that want a full-time job, all the people who dropped off the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits ran out, etc., you get a closer picture of what the unemployment rate is. That number is in the last row labeled U-6.

U-6 is much higher at 18.0%. Both numbers would be way higher still, were it not for millions dropping out of the labor force over the past few years.

Some of those dropping out of the labor force retired because they wanted to retire. The rest is disability fraud, forced retirement, discouraged workers, and kids moving back home because they cannot find a job.

Covid-19 has also distorted the U-6 unemployment rate as noted by the huge discrepancy in part-time employment.

Strength is Relative

It’s important to put the jobs numbers into proper perspective.

In the household survey, if you work as little as 1 hour a week, even selling trinkets on eBay, you are considered employed.

In the household survey, if you work three part-time jobs, 12 hours each, the BLS considers you a full-time employee.

In the payroll survey, three part-time jobs count as three jobs. The BLS attempts to factor this in, but they do not weed out duplicate Social Security numbers. The potential for double-counting jobs in the payroll survey is large.

Household Survey vs. Payroll Survey

The payroll survey (sometimes called the establishment survey) is the headline jobs number, generally released the first Friday of every month. It is based on employer reporting.

The household survey is a phone survey conducted by the BLS. It measures unemployment and many other factors.

If you work one hour, you are employed. If you don’t have a job and fail to look for one, you are not considered unemployed, rather, you drop out of the labor force.

Looking for jobs on Monster does not count as “looking for a job”. You need an actual interview or send out a resume.

These distortions artificially lower the unemployment rate, artificially boost full-time employment, and artificially increase the payroll jobs report every month.

Final Thoughts

The BLS is still guessing but it thinks its guesses are better. 

I suspect the birth-death models have significantly underestimated permanent business closures.

Regardless, the economy is short 15 million jobs and they are not all coming back.

Recovery Will Take Years

As noted yesterday The Fed Promotes a Quickening that Takes Many Years

Huge headwinds remain and the reopenings are now in reverse. Don't expect huge gains in July.

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