Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment for January revised down, flatlines for February.
Figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payroll employment, February release (dark bold red), January release (red), December (pink), 000’s, s.a, on log scale. Light green shaded period denotes data benchmarked to QCEW data. Source: BLS.
The Brownback-Kansas experiment, that is. Revised employment data for Kansas shows that employment was flat for nearly a year and a half, before crashing in mid-2017.
Back in mid-December, Political Calculations asked if California was in recession. Following Monday’s state-level employment release incorporating benchmarked data, we have a better idea of the answer — it’s likely no.
New state level employment data, benchmarked through September 2017, released yesterday indicate the manufacturing employment surge reported last year has been erased, as I predicted in this post. The October-January data do not incorporate additional information from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
Back in mid-December, Political Calculations asked if California was in recession. Data released by the Philadelphia Fed suggests the answer is no.
Figure 1: Coincident index for California (blue), and implied index value for June 2018 using leading index (light blue arrow, blue dot) against log scale. NBER defined national recession dates shaded gray. Red arrow at date of Political Calculations post. Source: Philadelphia Fed [1], [2], and author’s calculations.
we’d have had over 340,000 more jobs in December. And over 380,000 more jobs in January
Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), and 2016 linear deterministic exponential trend set to match 2017M01 value (red), in 000’s, seasonally adjusted, on log scale. Orange shading denotes 2017 data. Source: BLS December 2017 January 2018 release, author’s calculations. (updated 2/2)
The release of labor market indicators suggests not, contra some recent commentary.
Figure 1: California civilian employment over age 16 from household survey (black), nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), private nonfarm payroll employment (pink) from establishment survey, all in thousands, seasonally adjusted, on log scale. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS and NBER.
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That’s a title of a July 28 piece in IBD. He writes:
According to the Energy Information Administration, which tracks energy use in production on a monthly basis, the single largest source of electric power for the first half of 2017 was…coal.
Some analysts continue to infer short term trends solely based on household labor market series compiled at the state level. Here are two pictures showing why focusing on the household over establishment could be misguided.
Here are various vintages of the November release for California household/civilian employment series.
Figure 1: Civilian employment from household survey in California, from November 2013 release (blue), November 2014 release (red), November 2015 release (green), November 2016 (black), and November 2017 (teal), all seasonally adjusted. Source: BLS via ALFRED and FRED.