Looking Past The Obvious

On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse took a close look at the August jobs numbers. When you look past the obvious jobs increase, there are some troubling things hidden in those numbers.

The article reports:

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the August Jobs Report [DATA HERE].

The topline is a net gain of 315,000 jobs with an increase in unemployment to 3.7%.  However, the June and July jobs reports were revised down by 107,000 lower than previously reported, and if you look carefully at the data, you can see a serious problem.

Keep in mind, in the background is a release yesterday showing productivity within the economy dropping in the second quarter by 4.1%. [DATA]  Combine the drop in productivity with higher wages of 5.7% and total wage costs per unit of business output are up 10.1%.  Now we turn back to today’s employment release, and look at these three points of data:

(1) Unemployment for adult men and unemployment for Latinos increased in August.  Adult men and specifically adult Latino men are losing their jobs. (2) The average number of hours worked in August dropped 0.1 hour to 34.5 hours. (3) Total employment amid those aged 16 to 19-years of age increased by 363, 000 in August:

…A total of 363,000 more teenagers started working in August, yet the total net gain in employment overall was 315,000 jobs. That should be the headline of the August 2022 jobs report.

The good news is that the workforce participation rate did increase from 62.1 in July to 62.4 in August. At least it is moving in the right direction. During the Trump administration, the workforce participation rate hit 63.4 in January and February of 2020.