The monthly Jobs Report, or Employment Situation Report, is a market mover. A strong jobs report normally pushes the stock market(s) higher while a weak one tends to send the market(s) lower. The jobs report includes the Current Population Survey (CPS) data, or Household Data, on full-time and part-time job creation, the level of unemployed workers, and the workforce population. This data is then used to create the unemployment rate number and the participation rate number. A second section of the report is the Current Employment Statistics (CES,) or Establishment Data. The CES data was the foundation of the "Job Creation" streak that President Obama touted. Each data set has a seasonally adjusted (SA) component and a non-seasonally adjusted (NSA) component. The seasonal factors used to convert the NSA data to the SA data changes between data set, category of data, month and year.
This column writes numerous articles regarding the "jobs report" data. This month this column produced two pre-jobs report forecast columns. The first column "Beware of the Jobs Data Revisions" details how the "jobs streak" of President Obama ended last May. This column has produced many article on this topic - one discussed the un-reported Non-Farm Payroll Streak of President Bush. One article discussed the revisions to the data that meant that the job streak could have been reported as ending during January 2015. A downward revision to the prior months data (say from 211,000 to 191,000) would mean that the current month's 213,000 "jobs" number would be boosted to 233,000. If last month's data was revised up from 211,000 to 231,000 Non-farm payroll than this month' s number would be reported lower because it had a higher starting point. What happened during May of 2016 was that the April number was revised down 121.838 million to 121.780 million. This downward revision of 58,000 "jobs" allowed the May number to rise by 25,000. Reality was that the 121.805 million was a drop of 33,000 jobs, before the revisions. The net loss was solidified in the June Jobs revision to the May number when it was "reported" that there was a drop of 1,000 jobs. That number was reinforced by the final revision of the May jobs number during the July Jobs report.
There was a phantom revision to the first ten months of the 2016 NSA and SA CES data for the Private Sector workers and the non-farm payroll workers. Somehow we lost 164,000 workers during January 2016 - this allowed the streak to continue to be promoted. November and December were not revised from their "final" revision numbers. Someone in Washington DC is reading this column.
The second article published in preparation for the May Jobs Report was "May Should Mean Job Creation and a Drop in Unemployment." We have seen historically low levels of continuing claims for months, While the CPS data measures people who are searching for work and cannot find it (U-3,) the weekly unemployment claims data reflects people who has recently lost jobs and are claiming benefits. There is a tendency for Unemployment (U-3) to rise during May. The weekly claims number for mid-May, when the CPS data is collected, was down considerably since Mid-April. May also typically records a spike in full-time unemployment and a drop in part-time employment. What is reported, seasonally adjusted, if often quite different and not consistently the same directio. Sometimes the SA FT number falls and the SA PT number rises.
We saw Workers Record a Jump of 888,000 workers, Report an increase of 147,000 Private Sector Workers. The non-seasonally adjusted private sector CES worker number was reported at 147,000. This is well short of what was expected or projected. It was within the range originally propose in the forecast column. It was a growth rate faster than last May, and it was faster than May 2010. The Seasonal factor was a little high. Had we used last year's seasonal factor the number would have been reported at 115,000 - still better than last May. Improvement is Improvement, right?
We saw Full-times jobs increase at the slowest rate since 2003 - and the smallest part-time loss since 2007. This is considerably lower than what was projected. It was thought that we might "scare" 1.5 million full-time jobs. The number was a little scary. It was also thought that we could see a half-million part-time jobs lost. We appear to be seeing a shift in the jobs market from part-time to full-time . This has been happening for months.
We have more jobs than ever recorded. We have 6.9 million more jobs, full-time and part-time, combined than July 2007. We are moving towards the "hot" Summer Jobs Market. We have 1.112 million more full-time jobs than last July. We have 142,000 more part-time jobs than last July. This is a jobs expansion.
We saw Unemployment Record a Rise and Report a Fall. This was a possibility. People looking for jobs who can't find them are considered "unemployed." This is different from people who are collecting unemployment benefits.
We saw participation stay relatively unchanged at 62.79%. The Unemployment rate is 4.11% - the lowest since October of 2006. Unemployment tends to bottom in October, not May. It is important to note that we had an unemployment rate of 4.27% during may of 2007 when we had a participation rate of 65.82%. An unemployment rate under 5% is considered full employment. Did we have "fuller employment" during 2007? Overflow employment? Or do we have underemployment now? The U-6 unemployment rate dropped from 9.4% last May to 8.1% this May, non-seasonally adjusted. Forget the "Obama Jobs Streak." Remember that President Obama had the longest streak of consecutive months with a U-6 over 11%. (Note: This column is from 2015.) Also, looking back to 2007 the U-6 was 7.9%. The lowest May level was 7.1% during May 1999.
There are many more ways to analyze this data. This column will produce other article on these numbers. One thing to keep in mind is that the number of people working multiple jobs declined from April. This is important because it means we may be in a transition period from a dual job economy to a one job economy. Stay tuned for the "War on (wo)Men" article, the "Red, Gray and Blue" article and the Sector data, as well as the "Five Presidents" article.
It's the economy.