6 ms·
Hiring dropped sharply in May, the weakest in 6 years
- MollyR 10y agoFor the curious, alternative measures of labor underutilization http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ianai 10y agoThis doesn't worry me so much on it's own. You have to contrast it with new unemployment rates.
- xufi 10y agoI think the last time I checked it was around 5%
- cmdrfred 10y ago5% of people qualify for unemployment benefits I believe, not that 95% of people that want jobs have them. For most purposes an essentially useless measurement. "A broader measure of unemployment that includes people too discouraged to search for work or who are making do with a part-time job because they cannot find a full-time one, stayed steady at 9.7 percent."[0] [0]http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-report-unemployment-wages.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-repo... (credit: dforrestwilson1)
- dragonwriter 10y ago> 5% of people qualify for unemployment benefits I believe Incorrect; the headline rate does not only include those qualified for unemployment benefits (it does only include that part of the working-age non-institutionalized population out-of-work and actively looking for work, though.)
- xufi 10y agoRight, Doesnt the ones who are qualified add up to about %18 or so with the unreported numbers?
- dragonwriter 10y agoI'm not sure what you are trying to ask, but the most inclusive labor force underutilization measures (U-6) is only 9.7%, not 18%.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> You have to contrast it with new unemployment rates. IIRC, the concern is that hiring slowdowns tend to lead increases in unemployment. But, yes, the unemployment rate (not just the headline rate, but all of the alternative measures from BLS as well) is still dropping.
- dev1n 10y agothe unemployment rate dropped because more people left the workforce and became discouraged workers (a la haven't searched for work in the past 4 weeks).
- dragonwriter 10y ago> the unemployment rate dropped because more people left the workforce and became discouraged workers For the last monthly downtick, if you look at all the alternative measures [0], that's not the case. Actually, what you see is that the headline unemployment rate dropped, but the difference is mostly a shift from unemployed to working part time for economic reasons; discouraged workers have stayed about the same. > (a la haven't searched for work in the past 4 weeks). Discouraged workers are not "haven't searched for work in the past 4 weeks" its that subset of the marginally attached ("those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months") who "have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work." [0, again] [0] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
- dforrestwilson1 10y agoThe unemployment rate is not a good metric. The labor force participation rate is more inclusive, and declined for the 2nd month in a row. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-report-unemployment-wages.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/business/economy/jobs-repo... Furthermore the quality of available jobs appears to have declined.
- baron816 10y ago> The unemployment rate is not a good metric. The labor force participation rate is more inclusive LFP rate is not better than the unemployment rate. There are a lot of factors that go into labor force participation, and demographics is probably the biggest. It peaked in the late 90s and has pretty much followed the same downward trend since: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-pa...
- dforrestwilson1 10y agoYou're making my point for me. Demographics matter. The older bubble demographic nearing retirement, and the new bubble demographic is not taking up the slack. http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/united_states_population_pyramid.jpg http://www.randalolson.com/wp-content/uploads/united_states_... Unemployment also ignores the disability insurance bubble.
- stinkytaco 10y agoNot taking up the slack implies there's something wrong with the new bubble demographic. There appears to be less slack to take up. As you pointed out, lower quality jobs.
- pessimizer 10y agoThat's why you use the prime age (25-54) employment rate: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300060 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300060 which has only clawed about halfway back since the property bubble burst (and which has been stagnant this year to date.)
- waspleg 10y agoGot laid off yesterday. Hooray.
- hourislate 10y agoWork is over rated. Just look at it as early retirement and consider yourself lucky.
- cylinder 10y agoSomeone should go tell all those sweatshop workers and coal miners that work is "overrated" and that they should all just retire early!
- jwatte 10y agoAren't the robots already doing that, and that's what the number tens are telling us?
- hourislate 10y agoIt seems no one has a sense of humor. But seriously, when I was a young guy I learned quickly that we are all temporary. One day your working the next day you could be on out on your ass. That's when I started living like I could be on the street tomorrow. Happily I can say that I was never without work but as a result of living with what I need and not what I want I amassed a small fortune and financial freedom.
- nfriedly 10y agoThat's a bummer. You probably already know about these, but just in case you don't, HN has monthy job-finding threads: * Who is hiring? (June 2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11814828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11814828 * Who wants to be hired? (June 2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11814830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11814830 And, if you feel like freelancing: * Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (June 2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11814829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11814829
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- kevenwang0531 10y agoNews media ought to pay more attention to the confidence intervals associated with these metrics. Uncertainty is always present in statistics and the revisions to these numbers rarely get reported (it was reported in this case to fit the tone of the story). News articles like these have a powerful psychological effect on the public, so shouldn't the media do a more responsible job by saying "oh by the way, it's 38,000 jobs +- 50,000"?
- eloff 10y agoProbably they figure they have to dumb it down for people to understand it. Which is hugely patronizing, and underestimates people I think. I wish the media would take their jobs more seriously in general, because, while there are scattered exceptions, by and large they distort facts, twist things, and misrepresent things to the point where it's nearly impossible to get an accurate view of the reality. Which is a complete shame, because they really have a powerful effect on people's views and those people go on to vote for idiot politicians and just plain wrong policies. I know in politics everyone has an opinion, but that doesn't mean all opinions are equally valid. More often than not the popular opinions are so off base with reality that it's sad, or scary, or both. And if you think it's bad in the US - look at Venezuela - a prime example of an ignorant and poor populace supporting bone-headed policies and politics until the country is reduced to a shambles. Democracy can only be as good as the voters, unfortunately - and the media bears a heavy responsibility there.
- joobus 10y ago> For example, the confidence interval for the monthly change in total nonfarm employment from the establishment survey is on the order of plus or minus 115,000. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm So 38,000 +- 115,000. In other words, they don't really know if employment went up or down.
- __derek__ 10y agoThanks for digging that up. I thought it was around 100,000 and was about to go look for the actual number.
- generj 10y agoWell, that's worrisome. The hiring rate, along with new unemployment benefit applications and various other stats is the an early indicator for the macro economy.
- MaysonL 10y agoIt's a very noisy number, month to month.
- MaysonL 10y agoFor a bit of perspective, see "Payroll Employment: Best Years, Worst Month"[0] Non-Farm Payroll: Best Years, Worst Month Year Annual (000s) Worst Month (000s) 1984 3,880 128 1994 3,851 200 1983 3,458 -308 1997 3,408 -39 1988 3,242 94 1999 3,177 107 1987 3,153 171 1998 3,047 124 1996 2,825 -18 1993 2,817 -49 2014 2,5851 142 2005 2,506 67 1985 2,502 124 2013 2,331 84 2012 2,236 88 1995 2,159 -16 2006 2,085 2 2011 2,083 70 2004 2,033 32 12014 is the hiring pace through August. [0]http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/09/payroll-employment-best-years-worst.html http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/09/payroll-employment...
- internaut 10y agoThe pace of hiring has halved since 1984?
- josh5555 10y agoWe really need is more immigration here. That will fix all of our problems.