The Employment Situation release for May was not entirely a surprise, given Jim's post yesterday, but contained unwelcome news nonetheless. WSJ RTE quotes Stephen Stanley of Pierpoint Securities thus: "...consider me worried".
Note that actual employment rose; but the seasonally adjusted series has flattened out.
Figure 1: Total nonfarm payroll employment, seasonally adjusted (blue), and not seasonally adjusted (red), both in thousands. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS May employment situation, via St. Louis Fed FREDII, and NBER.
Private employment and aggregate hours growth (m/m) are equal, and decelerating.
Figure 2: Log private nonfarm payroll employment, seasonally adjusted (dark blue), and log aggregate weekly hours for production and nonsupervisory workers (dark red), both normalized to zero at 2007M12. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS May employment situation, via St. Louis Fed FREDII, and NBER.
Finally, I think it worthwhile to observe that government employment at the state and local level continues to deduct from overall employment growth.
Figure 3: Total government employment, seasonally adjusted, minus temporary Census workers (teal, left axis), and state and local government employment (pink, right axis), both in thousands. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS May employment situation, via St. Louis Fed FREDII, and NBER.
That is something to keep in mind as state and local government continue to slash budgets. [0] [1]
Reuters article here. For more analysis, see Stone/CBPP.
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