The October employment release was much in line with expectations. I will focus my observations on a few observations:
(1) Alternative indicators indicate better improvement than headline (estimated) nonfarm payroll employment; (2) estimated nonfarm payroll employment has been revised upward over the past couple months; (3) estimated employment compensation growth remains muted, especially after taking into account catch-up and estimated productivity gains.
Category Archives: employment
Did States that Raised the Minimum Wage Have Faster or Slower Employment Growth?
The answer is faster…so contra the arguments of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, and Wisconsin Manufacturers Association, it seems unlikely that there are large negative employment impacts from minimum wage increases. Oh, also contra Sabia for the Employment Policies Institute (who has still not responded to my repeated requests for his data, after six months).
Robust Employment Growth
That’s the message from the BLS today.
Economic Portents – Kansas
Here are some economic indicators for Kansas; they indicate rising GDP but stalling real personal income (through 2014Q1), stagnant employment growth, with manufacturing employment deviating from national trends.
Pessimism about U.S. growth rates
A growing number of observers are starting to conclude that we’re never going to see the rebound in growth rates that many people had anticipated as the U.S. recovers from the Great Recession. Here I comment on a new paper in which Northwestern Professor Robert Gordon explains the basis for his pessimism.
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Links for 2014-08-03
Quick links to a few items I found interesting.
Parsing the Employment and GDP Releases
The employment release reported a 209,000 net increase in nonfarm payroll (NFP) employment was below consensus, but still represented the sixth straight month of +200K net job creation. The net change in private NFP was 198,000. Here I want to note (1) the household survey based alternate measure of nonfarm payroll employment also continues to rise; (2) revisions in NFP and private NFP have typically been positive in recent months; (3) the 2014Q1 drop in GDP seems a little out of line with labor input.
The June Employment Release
Rapid and broad based employment growth
Links for 2014-06-11
Quick links to a few items I found interesting.