Some good news, but it all has to be put in perspective. As Mark Thoma points out, 120,000 jobs is about what is needed to keep unemployment from rising. In addition, the drop in the unemployment rate was driven largely by the drop in the participation rate, not the rise in employed. That’s going to be greater relevance if the extension of unemployment benefits is further blocked (in other words, there are offsetting employment effects from UI, as discussed in this rejoinder to Mulligan). More discussion at Izzo/WSJ RTE. I’m going to focus on data from the establishment survey.
The main points:
- Nonfarm payroll, and the civilian employment series adjusted to conform to the NFP series both continue to rise, with the latter rising more rapidly.
- Aggregate weekly hours in the private sector continues to rise more rapidly than employment, but has not caught up.
- Total government employment continues to decline.
- Most of the decline in government employment is at the state and local levels.
Just when you think you’ve recovered from the Thanksgiving celebration, you turn around and find nothing but more holidays. Although the holidays are a joyous time for families and friends, they are a lot of work. This time of year usually means shopping for presents, shopping for food, returning those presents for different presents, and discovering you need to go buy more food (at least in my family). For those on the other side of the spending frenzy, the small businesses, this means a lot of credit card processing.
spiral.”