December Jobs Report: Late Cycle Mediocre Growth Reasserts Itself

HEADLINES:

+143,000 jobs added

U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1%

U6 underemployment rate rose +0.1% from 8.0% to 8.1%

Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment:

Wages and participation rates

Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: rose +43,000 from 5.265 million to 5.308 million

Part time for economic reasons: rose +64,000 from 4.851 million to 4.915 million

Employment/population ratio ages 25-54: rose +0.1% from 79.0% to 79.1%

Average Weekly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose $.0.07 from $22.23 to $22.30, up +2.3% YoY. (Note: you may be reading different information about wages elsewhere. They are citing average wages for all private workers. I use wages for nonsupervisory personnel, to come closer to the situation for ordinary workers.)

Holding Trump accountable on manufacturing and mining jobs

Trump specifically campaigned on bringing back manufacturing and mining jobs. Is he keeping this promise?

Manufacturing jobs rose by +25,000 for an average of +17,500 a month vs. the last seven years of Obama’s presidency in which an average of 10,300 manufacturing jobs were added each month.

Coal mining jobs fell -400 for an average of -63 a month vs. the last seven years of Obama’s presidency in which an average of -300 jobs were lost each month

October was revised downward by -33,000. November was revised upward by +24,000, for a net change of -9,000.

The more leading numbers in the report tell us about where the economy is likely to be a few months from now. These were mixed.

the average manufacturing workweek fell -0.1 hour from 40.9 hours to 40.8 hours. This is one of the 10 components of the LEI.

construction jobs increased by +30,000. YoY construction jobs are up +210,000.

temporary jobs increased by +7,000.

the number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less decreased by -18,000 from 2,253,000 to 2,235,000. The post-recession low was set over two years ago at 2,095,000.