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Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 204,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in leisure and hospitality, retail trade, professional and technical services, manufacturing, and health care.
Well now, so much for the “government shutdown.” Can I vote for one all the time given this result?
Let's look at the household numbers, because when you do this report is a disaster and in fact is now saying we're on the cusp of a recession if not already in one.
Note the annualized rate of change. It is on the cusp of going negative and that has a high correlation with recession.
The total number of employed people decreased on a month-by-month basis. The trend may be up, but not by much.
The employment rate of the population is following the same pattern of the last four years, and is declining again. This is a flat-line — there has been no improvement since 2009.
Population-adjusted, the employment situation took a steep header this month.
Temporary layoffs went up by about 300,000, but all other loser categories decreased. So much for the “terrible” federal shutdown — the facts say it was good for the economy, not bad.
The workweek was unchanged and average hourly earnings were up 2 cents. Among production employees average workweek hours were down a tenth to 33.6. Neither of these figures are particularly significant.
This is a crap report on the facts, but it says that the screaming about the government shutdown was not bad, it was on-balance good. The market is taking it quite negatively — whether that's because the screaming about the government shutdown has been disproved or whether it's because on any sort of dispassionate look this is a recession print is an open question.