Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666
December’s jobs report, and more
The only major economic report released this week was the Employment Situation Summary for December from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as apparently the Labor Department had been funded prior to the government shutdown…the November report on Construction Spending from the Census Bureau had been scheduled for release on Thursday, but it has been postponed due to the government funding impasse over funding for Trump’s Mexican border wall.
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After the 16 day government shutdown of October 2013, all such postponed reports were eventually released, with many of them delayed by more than 2 weeks, so presumably that will be the case again this time…
Meanwhile, with Federal Reserve being self-funded, the Dallas Fed Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey reported their general business activity composite index fell to -5.1 from last month’s +17.6, the largest drop in their index since 2008 and now indicating a modest contraction of the Texas manufacturing economy…privately issued reports released this week included the ADP Employment Report for December and the December report on light vehicle sales from Wards Automotive, which estimated that vehicles sold at a 17.51 million annual rate in December, up 0.9% from the 17.35 million annual pace of vehicle sales in November but down 1.4% from the 17.76 million vehicle rate reported in December of 2017…in addition, this week saw the release of the widely followed manufacturing purchasing manager’s survey from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM): the December Manufacturing Report On Business reported that the manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) fell to 54.1% in December, down from 59.3% in November and the lowest since November 2016, which suggests a much weaker expansion in manufacturing firms nationally.
See also:
- December 2018 Manufacturing Survey Growth Rate Slowed
- November 2018 CoreLogic Home Prices Up 5.1% Year-over-Year
- 02 January 2019 Fed’s Balance Sheet Down $385 Billion Over Last 12 Months
Employers Add 312,000 Jobs in December, Unemployment Rate Rises to 3.9%
The Employment Situation Summary for December indicated that employers added the most jobs since February, but that the unemployment rate rose due to an increase in those looking for but unable to find work…estimates extrapolated from the seasonally adjusted establishment survey data projected that employers added 312,000 jobs in December, after the previously estimated payroll job increase for November was revised up from 155,000 to 176,000, and the payroll jobs increase for October was revised up from 237,000 to 274,000…that means that this report represents a total of 370,000 more seasonally adjusted payroll jobs than were reported last month, enough to increase the 2018 job increase average to 220,000 jobs per month over the past year….the unadjusted data, however, shows that there were actually 54,000 less payroll jobs extent in December than in November, as the usual seasonal layoffs in areas such as construction and other outdoor services were normalized by the seasonal adjustments to show the job increases indicated..
Seasonally adjusted job changes for December were spread throughout the goods producing and service sectors including government, with the 1,000 jobs lost in the information sector the only decrease noted…employment in health care and social assistance increased by 57,900 jobs during the month, as 13,300 more employees were added by home health care services and 8,300 more were employed by individual and family services…another 55,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were added in the leisure and hospitality sector, with the addition of 48,700 more jobs in bars and restaurants….the broad professional and business services sector, which usually leads in monthly job gains, added 43,000 jobs, with 14,800 of those working for employment services and 17,600 more employed in a variety of professional and technical services….construction work saw a relative job increase of 38,000, as seasonally adjusted employment in heavy and civil engineering construction increased by 16,300 and non-residential specialty trade contractors employed 16,100 more workers than normal for December… in addition, 32,000 more jobs were added by manufacturers, with factories producing fabricated metal products accounting for 6,700 of those…private educational services added 24,100 jobs in December, with no further details as to type of education given…then, after a downward seasonal adjustment, retail sales still added 23,800 more workers, with a 15,000 increase in those working in general merchandise stores offsetting a 9,400 decrease in employment in sporting goods, hobby, book, and music stores… meanwhile, employment in the other major sectors including mining, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, utilities, financial activities, and government, all saw smaller job gains over the month..
Boosted by sizable pay increases in the trade, transportation, and utilities sectors, the establishment survey also showed that average hourly pay for all employees rose by 11 cents an hour to $27.48 an hour in December, after it had increased by 6 cents an hour in November; that brought the average pay gain for the year to 84 cents, an increase of 3.2% since last December….meanwhile, the average hourly earnings of production and non-supervisory employees increased by 9 cents to $23.05 an hour…employers also reported that the average workweek for all private payroll employees increased by 0.1 hour to 34.5 hours in December, while hours for production and non-supervisory personnel was unchanged at 33.7 hours…at the same time, the manufacturing workweek increased by 0.1 hour to 40.9 hours, while average factory overtime increased by 0.1 hour to 3.6 hours…
Meanwhile, the December household survey indicated that the seasonally adjusted extrapolation of those who reported being employed rose by an estimated 142,000 to 156,945,000, while the estimated number of those unemployed rose by 276,000 to 6,294,000; which thus meant there was a rounded 419,000 increase in the total labor force…since the working age population had grown by 180,000 over the same period, that meant the number of employment aged individuals who were not in the labor force fell by 237,000 to 95,649,000…with the increase of those in the labor force proportionately larger than the increase in the civilian noninstitutional population, the labor force participation rate rose 0.2%, from 62.9% in November to 63.1% in December….meanwhile, the increase in number employed as a percentage of the increase in the population was nearly stable and left the employment to population ratio, which we could think of as an employment rate, unchanged at 60.6%…at the same time, the relatively large increase in the number considered unemployed was enough to raise the unemployment rate from 3.7% in November to 3.9% in December.. meanwhile, the number of those who reported they were forced to accept just part time work fell by 124,000, from 4,781,000 in November to 4,657,000 in December, which was enough to keep the alternative measure of unemployment, U-6, which includes those “employed part time for economic reasons”, unchanged at 7.6% of the labor force in December…
Like most reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment situation press release itself is easy to read and understand, so you can get more details on these two reports from there…note that almost every paragraph in that release points to one or more of the tables that are linked to on the bottom of the release, and those tables are also on a separate html page here that you can open it along side the press release to avoid the need to scroll up and down the page.
See also:
- December 2018 BLS Jobs Situation – One Of The Best Growth Months of 2018
- December 2018 ADP Job Growth Is 271,000
- December 2018 Job Cuts: 2018 Job Cuts Up 28.5% Year-over-Year
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