Today the BLS reported its monthly jobs data. Payroll employment beat the headline job creation numbers but the hourly wage print was down.
BLS-Labor Statistics @BLS_gov
Construction jobs increased from 8.5% to 9.4% year over year. The higher unemployment rate in construction is great news for the economy.
As always, education matters
High school drop outs which peak unemployment was 15.8% in the great recession is now down to 7.7%. However, compared to college education Americans, there peak unemployment rate in the great recession was 5% and now down to 2.5%.
We are now in the longest job expansion ever on record, by a long shot too.
Below is a breakdown of the average weekly earnings by industry.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/employment-and-average-hourly-earnings-by-industry-bubble.htm
Any jobs print over 170K this year is strong sign for the economy. We have a good supply of job openings out there, so now it is just a matter of getting the labor to fill them. It’s going to be about the labor at this stage of the cycle.
Just like the Fed wage tracker pulled back from cycle highs in wage inflation
https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker.aspx?panel=1
We saw the same thing we with the wage inflation data today. Trend is your friend and that is what matters, slow and steady on wage inflation but it is heading the right way.
From Calculated Risk
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2017/02/comments-another-solid-employment-report.html
Logan Mohtashami is a financial writer and blogger covering the U.S. economy with a specialization in the housing market. Logan Mohtashami is a senior loan officer at AMC Lending Group, which has been providing mortgage services for California residents since 1987. Logan also tracks all economic data daily on his own facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Logan.Mohtashami