The government has established several categories to gauge the unemployment rate. The one most media focus 90% of their attention on is labeled U3. This counts as unemployed those jobless people who have looked for work sometime during the past four weeks without getting hired. The rate in January was 3.6%. U6 covers both unemployment, underemployment, and discouraged workers, including anybody who has looked for work in the past 12 months. Many economists consider this a better gauge of the job market’s overall health. In January, U6 rose 0.2 to 6.9%.
Donald Trump made big claims in his State of the Union address for what he has done to boost jobs, employing his usual self-congratulatory exaggeration that the economy is now the best it’s ever been, a claim economists dispute without breaking a sweat. Trump implies that the economy, job market included, was a wreck when he arrived on the scene three years ago, but prosperity for all has returned since he launched an American “comeback.”
In fact, though the recovery for many Americans from the Great Recession was excruciatingly slow, if we exclude the first year President Barack Obama was in office, when hundreds of thousands of jobs were being lost each month, the average annual gain in new jobs during his two terms exceeded the average during Trump’s three years in the White House. During Trump’s three years, the average annual gain has been 2.114 million new jobs. In Obama’s final three years in office, the annual average was 2.684 million jobs.
The bureau reported that average wages for all workers rose in January by 7 cents an hour, and wages for production and nonsupervisory workers rose by 3 cents an hour. Although wages have been increasing, when inflation is factored in, they haven’t increased much. In 2019, real (inflation-adjusted) wages rose 2.9%, but their buying power was reduced by 2.1% inflation. As more and more locales raise their minimum wage, some substantially, the financial situation for workers on the economic bottom tier will improve. But the increase won’t have much impact on overall wage statistics because only 2.3% of the U.S. workforce is paid at or below the minimum wage.
Here are more data from the January jobs report:
The civilian workforce rose in January by 50,000 after rising by 209,000 in December and 40,000 in November.
The labor force participation rate rose 0.2 to 63.4%. The employment-population ratio rose to 61.2% in January.
Unemployment rates differ by race and sex. (January percentages in bold; December percentages in [brackets and italics].) Adult men: 3.3% [3.1%]; Adult women: 3.2% [3.2%]; Whites: 3.1% [3.2%] ; Blacks: 6.0% [5.9%]; Asians: [2.5%]; Hispanics: 4.3% [4.2%]; American Indians: Not counted monthly.
Hours & Wages:
• Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees rose in January by 3 cents an hour to $23.87
• Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls in January rose 7 cents an hour to $28.44
• Average work week for all employees on nonfarm payrolls remained unchanged at 34.3 hours in January.
• The manufacturing work week in January remained the same at 40.4 hours.
January job gains and losses for selected categories:
- Education and health services: 72,000
° Health care & social assistance: 47,200 - Professional and business services: 21,000
- Manufacturing: -12,000
- Temporary help services: -1,500
- Transportation & warehousing: 28,300
- Financial activities: -1,000
- Leisure & hospitality: 36,000
- Information: 5,000
- Retail trade: -8,300
- Construction: 44,000
- Mining and Logging: 0
- Government at all levels: 19,000
Here’s what the seasonally adjusted job growth numbers have looked like in the previous decade compared with this January’s gain of 225,000 jobs:
January 2010: 2,000
January 2011: 19,000
January 2012: 354,000
January 2013: 191,000
January 2014: 175,000
January 2015: 191,000
January 2016: 73,000
January 2017: 185,000
January 2018: 121,000
January 2019: 269,000
The bureau uses the Current Employment Survey of 142,000 business establishments at 689,000 individual worksites in its count of how many jobs are created each month and derives the unemployment rate from the Current Population Survey of 60,000 households. Since the final day of each survey falls around the 12th of each month, this month’s data actually measures jobs gained in the first part of January and the last part of December.
Source: http://feeds.dailykosmedia.com/~r/dailykosofficial/~3/RZeEv1-nYkg/-225-000-jobs-added-in-January-but-annual-revision-chopped-a-half-million-jobs-off-total-under-Trump