Down is Up - Drop In Multiple Job Holders Month to Month
Increase Year to Year
This column writes many articles on the employment situation data. The first article was "July Jobs Report Fireworks" We saw full-time jobs record an increase during July. The same could be said for part-time jobs and the number of unemployed. This means that we recorded an increase in the workforce participation rate. We also saw July workers increase in numbers at a rate greater than July 2013 and slower than July 2015 and July 2016.
The second article written was "Five Presidents at Six Months." This column compared President Trumps first six months of jobs and worker creation with Presidents Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama. President Trump has added over 4 million full-time jobs and trimmed the number of part-time jobs and unemployed workers during his first six months where President Obama barely added any jobs and saw the number of unemployed workers spike by over 2 million workers. President Trump has added more workers than President Clinton and almost as many overall jobs. The "Five Presidents" series, and its predecessor "Four Presidents at __ Months" created a new measure of unemployment, U-7 unemployment, which compares the unemployment levels of the current month, and the participation rate, with the same month of prior years. "Full employment," unemployment under 5%, is not the same a at 63% participation rate as it is at a 67% participation rate.
The third article examined the changes in employment and participation of men compared to women. "Men Finding New Full-time Jobs" detailed how men lost more full-time jobs than women during the recession. It also detailed how women recovered quicker from the recession and have added more jobs than men since July 2007, the peak of the pre-recession employment market.It also detailed how the U-7 for men is over 10%.
Are we working harder or smarter? The jobs report data has other data buried within it. One item is the number of people working multiple jobs. If people are working multiple jobs and they lose one they do not receive less-employed insurance benefits. If they transition form two part-time jobs to one full-time job the participation rate will remain the same or possibly drop. The participation rate is the number of full-time jobs plus the number of part-time jobs, plus the number of unemployed works, the total of which is divided by the number of people in the workforce population. We could be seeing a transition that is being under-reported.
Total Multiple Job Workers Fell from June's Level, Up from Last July's Level. There were 7.303 million multiple job workers (MJH) last month - down from 7.425 million during June and up from 7.190 last July.
Record July Level of People Working Two Part-time Jobs. The number of people who have to work two part-time jobs, or who want to work two part-time jobs, ticked down from June's 1.997 million workers to 1.979 million workers. This is still an increase from last July's 1.964 million dual PT job workers - a record at the time for the month of July. Last November we had an all-time all-months record level of people working two part-time jobs when we had 2.287 million workers working two part-time jobs. We normally see a "annual Low" of people working two part-time jobs either during June or August.
Near Record level of people working two Full-time Jobs. There are over 350,000 people who are working two full-time jobs. This is an increase from last month and last July. Is this a trend or a blip?
The trend is generally higher. We normally see peak multiple job holders during October, November, or December, the Christmas Season. We saw Fall levels of MJH during this March with over 8.1 million people working multiple jobs.Will we see record levels of seasonal full-time jobs increase or will we see an increase in part-time jobs ? Will this lead to an elevate level of MJH workers? We could see an increase in jobs, no change in workers, and an increase in multiple job workers. This will keep unemployment low now and into the future. We could see more people enter and re-enter the jobs market. We could see a sizable increase in participation.
It's the economy.