The War on (Wo)Men continues
There are many ways to examine the Jobs Report Data. The October Employment Situation report was released this past Friday. It was thought that we would see a spike in Seasonally Adjusted (SA) Workers, the Current Employment Statistics (CES) data, and a drop in SA Jobs, the Current Population Survey (CPS) data. It was also projected that we would see a drop in the seasonally adjusted and non-seasonally adjusted U-3 unemployment level. There have already been three articles written on the data in the Jobs Report:
- "October Workers Soar" detailed how the CPS data fell and the CES data rose. Workers were up - jobs were down;
- "Five Presidents at Nine Months" details how President Trump is adding jobs and workers at a pace not seen since the first nine months of President Clinton;
- "Multiple Job Workers Down during October" found that the number of workers working multiple jobs fell last month, especially those who worked two part-time jobs.
This recovery has not been even. Men lost over 10 million full-time jobs at the depth of the recession. Men have seen their workforce population grow by 11.4 million workers since July 2007. It took until the Summer of 2016 for all of those lost full-time jobs to be recovered before they started slipping away, again. One of the talking points during the 2012 election was the "War on Women." The real war has been on male dominated job sectors and full-time jobs for men. So what happened this month?
Men lost full-time and part-time jobs during October. The level of men working full-time jobs fell from 72.107 million to 71.993 million. The number of men working part-time jobs fell from 10.012 million to 9.881 million, The number of unemployed men was virtually unchanged from 3.397 million to 3.362 million.
Women saw a slight drop in full-time jobs and a slight gain in part-time jobs during October. Women saw they level drop from 55.127 million to 55.062 million. Their part-time jobs increased slightly from 7.247 million to 17.286 million. The number of unemployed women dropped from 3.158 million to 2.880 million.
While Unemployment is near a sixteen year low, participation is masking the real unemployment rate. You would have to look to October 2000 to find a lower level of unemployed workers. The problem is that, as the Five Presidents Article detailed, we have the lowest participation rate after nine months of any of the five two term presidents. The non-seasonally adjusted participation rate for the entire population was 66.9% during October 2000. The October participation rate for the entire workforce was 62.7% this October. A better month for comparison is Octoer 2006 when the workforce participation rate was 66.4%.
Men Used to Participate at 73.52% - Now 68.95%. This is the numbers, the Effective Unemployment Rate. The authors of most reports rely upon the seasonally adjusted data. When seasonally adjusted data from different seasons are compared FACTs (False Assertions Considered to be True) are generated. While the male unemployment is virtually identical to that from October 2006, the participation rate is 4.57% lower now then it was then. We have more men who are not working and "not unemployed" than there are unemployed workers. If these missing men were added to the unemployment ranks then the U-7 unemployment rate would be 9.91%.
Women used to participate at 59.64% - Now it is 56.93%. Their unemployment rate is lower now than it was during October 2006, as well. Their missing worker level is 3.587 million, also greater than their official unemployment level. Their U-7 is 8.21%.
Men work more full-time jobs than women. Women work more part-time jobs than men. There are more U-3 unemployed men than women. There are more U-7 unemployed men than women. People wonder why we are not experiencing wage inflation as the economy continues to improve. We are not at full employment, therefore there is still slack in the workforce and slack in wages.
It's the economy.