**Story by Bloomberg’s Interactive Insight Desk… U.S. employees old enough to retire are outnumbering their teenage counterparts for the first time since at least 1948 when Harry Truman was president, a sign of how generations are now having to compete for jobs. Rest of the story and interactive graphics: http://www.bloomberg.com/insight/teens.html
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Labor Market
Historically, payroll growth rarely exceeds 400K in any given month, even in the best of times, not good news considering the US has lost 8mn jobs since the start of the recession. Some analysts have discussed a best case scenario where payrolls rise by 1mn a month, bringing us back to the pre-recession peak within […]
Disheartened job seekers who fled the labor market in mass during the height of the recession have begun to return putting pressure on the US unemployment rate. Based on a simple interpolation the U.S. labor force today should total 157.2mn, however due to the exodus of job seekers the labor force presently amounts to only […]
On the surface, a recovery in retail sales is not only a harbinger for stronger economic growth, but could prove to be the missing link for job creation (see chart). Climbing out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, consumption growth has been surprisingly tepid, at least partially due to companies’ lack of confidence […]
As tomorrow morning’s employment report approaches I wanted to take a quick look at the relationship between the four week moving average of initial jobless claims and the change in payrolls. As a general rule of thumb significant sustained job growth cannot occur until claims move below 400K. However, in March payrolls grew at 162K, […]
Payrolls moved up by +162K in March, compared to a forecast of +184K. Combined January and February revisions totaled an additional 40K jobs created. March added 48K census workers making the ex-census change in payrolls a modestly strong +136K. It is impossible to determine to what extent weather had on this report, but I expect […]
February’s surprise 0.1% increment in industrial production came despite severe winter weather during the month that was expected to hamper production. Amongst the index’s biggest gainers were computers and information processing equipment, which each rose roughly 1%. As Bloomberg put it these increments ‘signal the pickup in U.S. business investment is being sustained’. However, could […]
Here’s the latest state-by-state unemployment data from the BLS. The arrows indicate an increase or decrease in the rate from December 2009 to January 2010. Source: BLS
After a bit of a lull in 2009, M&A activity–a gauge toward GDP growth–has begun to gain some momentum this year. Unsurprisingly, this uptick in M&A activity coincides with gains in business and professional services employment; a series that includes lawyers and bankers. M&A Activity vs. Business and Professional Services Employment The upward trend for […]
Non-farm payrolls fell -36K, handily beating the latest consensus forecast of -68K. The unemployment rate was steady at 9.7%. The market can expect some volatility from government census worker hirings over the months ahead. The effect should be positive for the next couple months, but eventually turn negative as these workers are let go. One […]