Employers' payrolls grew by 227,000 last month and the unemployment held at 8.3%. That's a decline on the jobs number from January's revised-up value of 284,000 but it's a growth rate consistent with a slowly and consistently improving job market. The key word there is "consistent."
We're not adding jobs at breakneck speed, for sure, and we're still repairing the damage done by the great recession to the living standards of millions. But this month's report makes another addition to a solid and improving trend in what has been the most important missing piece in the economic recovery so far: conditions in the job market.
It's always important in these jobs reports to average out the noise inherent in monthly data. Doing so over the past three months, you get payrolls adding 245,000 per month, an significant acceleration over the comparable value a year ago of 150,000 per month, and a pace of growth that, if it persists, should help drive the unemployment rate lower and provide working Americans with a more welcoming labor market.
One of the things I'm paying attention to is the dispersion of job growth across industries, an indicator of how widespread and thus how sustainable is the jobs market recovery. Most industries added jobs last month-manufacturing was up 31,000-and while state and local job losses remain a problem, governments have been losing fewer jobs over the past few months (down 6,000 last month and only 1,000 in January). Construction, however, remains a weak spot, shedding 13,000 jobs in February.
The share of the population in the labor force (working or looking for work) ticked up a bit to 63.9%. This statistic doesn't usually get much attention, yet it's central to the jobs story right now. Before the recession, it stood at about 66%, but it's fallen steadily since the recession. But why does it matter?
Well, if less of the working-age population is looking for work-and thus not counted among the unemployed-it's actually easier to bring the unemployment rate down. That is, it takes fewer jobs to nudge the rate down because a smaller share of the population is in the labor market competition. Some analysts believe that if job growth picks up more people will come in off the sidelines and join the labor force, putting upward pressure on the jobless rate. I suspect that's true, but it hasn't happened yet.
And there's another force in play boosting job growth right now: slower productivity growth, as I describe here.
So has the GDP expansion that began in mid-2009 finally reached the job market? Have we achieved lift-off, escape velocity-is a self-sustaining virtuous cycle underway?
Unfortunately, those are questions that are tough to reliably answer in real time. I will assert that while existing threats-Europe, oil/gas, fading stimulus-could all knock some growth out of the economy in coming months, they're unlikely to do more than that. The economic bicycle has enough momentum not to keel over, even if it hits a bump. But it's still plodding more than speeding and it will still take many months-years even-to make up lost ground.
Busy morning-minutes away from giving a talk at the Univ of MD, Baltimore, so unlikely I'll be able to add much. Your best bet is to tune into the CBPP soon for chief economist Chad Stone's take. Also, I'll be discussing the report on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan show at 4 today.
Until then, have a good jobs day.
This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.
" The present economic circumstance simply doesn't feel like a recovery to the 99%" - - - That number is incorrect. I'd agree with "the 20%" at the bottom, and that from someone who's far from the 1% (I don't even know anyone who's a 1%er). There will never be a shortage of misery in which to wallow, we will never run out of bad news, or hard luck stories. That's the stuff of politics, it's what politicians live by. When it slops over into economic policy we're setting the stage for multiple miseries.
Mitt Romney, in a paen to China, plainly said he preferred China's business model over that of America.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/mitt-romney-chinese-regulators_n_1334799.html?ref=politics
From where I stand, it looks like the bottom 1/5th of the population have broken off from the prosperous mainstream of America and are drifting off toward misery and dependency, unwilling to modify their perspective for the sake of rejoining the rest of America in moving forward toward a future that, while uncertain, remains promising.
There are other options, the first of which is to lower prices - this is already happening, most dramatically and effectively in housing. Housing is more affordable today than it's been in a decade. Another option is in my micro-bio: Americans coming to realize that we employ each other, when we buy foreign made products we are laying off American workers. The list goes on and on.
The only thing that I'm sure that "Cons" object to is Big Government. If the federal government did what they are required to do, it would be great. But they don't, they head off on social engineering issues, leaving "regulation, oversight, and enforcement" to a handful of unappreciated and ridiculed lackeys.
the post office to lay off as many as 125,000 people..
gm still needs to buy back the 500,000,000 shares owned by the american people and they are shutting down production of the volt and laying off at least 1300 people..
that obama...running to beat greece to the bottom...
New jobs pay less and require our kids to go more in debt for a poor education. Savings are getting eaten up. Housing can't go anywhere. Our trade deficit is sucking money and jobs straight out of the economy. We have a tidal wave of seniors unprepared for retirement on the horizon. Healthcare costs have moved out of the common man's reach.
The next election is going to the party with some real economic solutions. If the Republicans want a platform of attacks on women, unions, seniors, education, the safety nets, etc; go for it.
But nothing will change unless the opposing party gets off its backside and starts talking about serious reform of taxes, trade, education, healthcare, etc. Show us the plans and maybe the people will give you the votes to make it happen.
A few high profile commissions created right now to have legislation ready to push through in the new year would go a long way to getting some voter support. Hope didn't lead to change. How about some change to restore hope?
That rules out Dems and Repubs, except for Buddy Roemer.
1. Manufacturing Employment is a distant shadow of its former self. More than half of the real underemployment/unemployment rate is due to the collapse of domestic manufacturing (http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/most-job-loss-offshoring-not-recession)
2. Illegal Alien Workers: a conservative estimate of 12 million "undocumented" workers drive the bottom of the wage scale toward zero. http://immigrationreform.com/2012/03/06/the-new-radical-chic-send-an-illegal-alien-to-college/
Until we confront the real reasons for the problem, the economy will oscillate along a new depressed baseline.
Rise of the FIRE economy (and Wall Street's pervasive infiltration of government)
http://www.mybudget360.com/financialization-era-banking-welfare-captured-our-economy-wealth-financial-debt-leverage/
Reagan had a baby recession compared to this... It was cyclic not a total structural economic collapse.
Clinton the best job record... only avg'd about 300K jobs per month.
Bush2 avg job increase was 300K jobs per YEAR, mostly government, while the population grew by 300 million.
Regards
So no, this is not a slow recovery, its amazing its not a great depression. Its not just a cyclic recession... and will take a long time to undo for the most part wrong way 30 years of outsourcing.
How long to re-open the 60,000 closed factories under Bush, and Neither hoover nor reagan, nor clinton were handed two ongoing unpaid for wars along with massive debt.
regards