Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported jobs data for November 2017. Payroll jobs grew at 228,000 which means that the longest job expansion streak continues, now for 86 months.
Charlie Bilello@charliebilello
86… As in 86 consecutive months of jobs growth, by far the longest streak in history. #payrolls
Now for the bad news –this has been a very hard jobs recovery cycle for robots. After so much promise that robots would soon be taking over the world, I do feel bad for all the disappointed robots waiting for their own jobs recovery. We need to see more support for robots in this cycle or Skynet could cause a civil war.
Back in the real world– Let’s take a look at the jobs breakdown per sector for the previous month.
From BLS: https://www.bls.gov/…/employment-by-industry-monthly-change…
And here is the wage breakdown per sector:
For 2017, I made this prediction for monthly jobs data:
“…For 2017 I am lowering my job creation numbers again ( 3rd straight year of decline) to adjust for tightening of the labor market leading to a lack of labor force growth.
…However, look for job creation numbers monthly to come down to 140K-170K a month ,to account for labor force growth.”
https://loganmohtashami.com/2016/12/31/2017-housing-economic-predictions/
Right now we are beating that estimate by 4K and year to date jobs are running just over 174K. This is much higher that what is needed for population growth. Until we see monthly job creation numbers under 100K, I wouldn’t put too much weight in the tight labor market thesis that some are promoting.
This jobs report as all others shows that education matters, but now even high school drop-outs have low unemployment rate of 5.2%.
The “floor” for the U6 unemployment rate is around 8%, and we have been at that rate for 2 months. This index can go lower if the economic cycle continues to move upward to an all-time record in Mid-2019.
From Doug Short:
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/12/08/november-jobs-report-228k-new-jobs-better-than-forecast
We have over 154,000,000 Americans working and are in the midst of the longest job expansion on record with low unemployment claims and all time highs in job openings.
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