The Labor Department reported Friday that the U.S. economy added 248,000 jobs in the month of September, beating out economists’ forecasts of 215,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate fell to 5.9 percent during the month, the lowest since July 2008. Wall Street expected it to hold steady at 6.1 percent. However, the labor force participation rate dropped to 62.7 percent, the lowest since February 1978. Economists forecast it to hold steady at 62.8 percent.
While 200k-plus monthly job creation is cause for optimism, economic policy-makers are focusing beyond the headline numbers, including the unemployment rate and the number of monthly jobs created. With so many Americans reporting poor economic conditions despite the positive news, experts are now looking more at hourly wages, labor force participation, average work weeks, and other indicators that offer a broader gauge of the health of labor markets.
The abysmal labor force participation rate isn’t the only concerning piece of data that paint a picture of a labor market that is fundamentally weak. The employment-population ratio, which is currently at 59 percent, is a measure that receives little attention. But, according to Keith Hall, the former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2008 – 2012, the number warrants significant concern.
“It’s lower than it was when the recession ended. I think that’s a remarkable statistic,” says Hall, who is now a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “This has been a very slow, very bad recovery,” he says. “And I think the numbers have really struggled as a result. In fact, I’ve been very disappointed in the coverage of the numbers.”
The employment-population ratio has been at 59.0 percent for the fourth consecutive month, but has only increased .3 percent since September of 2013, when it stood at 58.7 percent.
There were 698,000 discouraged workers — or, people who have given up looking for work because they do not believe they will or can find it — in the month of September alone. Another 2.2 million Americans were marginally attached to the labor force, which are persons who wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They are not counted among the unemployed because they were determined by the BLS to not have searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.
The U-6 rate, which is defined as the “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force,” stands at a more accurate 11.6 percent.
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has repeated cited a lack in wage growth as a cause for concern and a primary factor behind the Fed’s monetary policy, which currently consists of putting off interest rate increases and cutbacks to money-printing and bond-buying. Yellen said wage growth is an indicator the Fed is watching for signs labor markets are strengthening since the declining headline unemployment rate has a great deal to do with the number of people quitting on the American dream.
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls fell by 1 cent to $24.53 in September. Wage growth has risen by just 2 percent year-over-year, which sadly, actually represents a slight improvement over prior months when the rate averaged around 1.5 percent. Even though it appears the long-term trend is headed in the right direction, it isn’t. It is still well below the 3 – 3.5 percent rate the Fed views as necessary to keep inflation at its desired 2 percent target rate, and wage growth to impact the purchasing power of working Americans.
The fundamental cause of wage stagnation is the poor quality of jobs created in the U.S. economy since the Great Recession ended. Part-time, low-paying jobs represent the vast majority of jobs created and that unfortunately didn’t change in September.
Approximately half of all jobs created in September came from the part-time, low-wage riddled sectors, including employment services (+34,000), retail trade (35,000), food and beverage (20,000), and leisure and hospitality (20,000). Totaling 109,000, there is little wonder why the number of involuntary part-time workers was unchanged again in September and stands at a sad 7.1 million Americans. These are able-bodied Americans who want full-time work, but cannot find an opportunity to do so.
The long-term share of jobs created held by these low-wage jobs is over 70 percent.
In economics, particularly with respect to the jobs market, the number of jobs isn’t the only piece of data that determines whether the American people are enjoying a strong economy. While the number of jobs created came in just under the 250,000 jobs needed to be created monthly in order to keep pace with population increases, for the first time in U.S. history the middle age and younger populations are looking at a far less prosperous future than the baby boomers looking ahead to retirement.
And that already bleak assessment assumes economics and economic policy occurs in a bubble, which of course it does not.
With the Federal Reserve paying such close attention to the factors discussed above, it should be reported how future monetary policy will inevitably impact the growing national debt, which currently sits just under $18 trillion and has the potential to erase the already weak gains in the labor market.
Minutes from the last meeting of the policy-making committee revealed a heated debate within the Fed over the timing and trajectory of rate hikes. Fed Chair Yellen, while acknowledging the incentive to keep wages low, says the “slack” in low wages must be tightened before raising interest rates, But inflation “hawks” argue that keeping rates low will invite runaway inflation and lead to asset bubbles. It is a debate in which every outcome seems to ensure the American worker becomes the loser.
Though wages are far too low, Yellen and others say wage growth must be modest due to the risks of inflationary pressure. When wages rise too quickly it can lead to runaway inflation, which becomes a vicious cycle. It will move on corporate profits eventually, and the cost of production thus final sale of goods will increase, quickly eroding the realized gains in Americans’ purchasing power.
Inflation “doves” argue that when rates increase it will increase borrowing costs for consumers, making it more expensive to get a mortgage or a car loan, or for small businesses to get a loan for expansion. On the other hand, hawks point to the fact that these economic events will happen regardless of the Fed’s policy, noting that increased rates will also raise the cost of borrowing for the government, which will soon find itself holding an unsustainable amount of debt if increases are not done slowly while progress is closely scrutinized.
Each worst-case scenario ends up hurting the worker the most, suggesting two positions that are falling woefully short of replacing shady monetary policy with sound regulatory and economic policies that would lead to more broad-based wealth creation.
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Notice how they HAVE to combine part-time and full-time in these reports, because if they divided it up, you would be able to see that most of the jobs are part time created by letting go so many full time in order to avoid Obamacare penalties. This is another crock to twist the real truth about jobs.
NO... It is that because of years of Trickle down Economics and the HUGE Growth of the top 5%'s Wages...
Employers only give part time to avoid OVERTIME wages (God forbid they pay a Decent wage... and take a small cut to their Millions of dollars Salary).. Better to have 3 people doing the same job for a Tiny Wage than 1 Person Doing it for a Living Wage.
These Low wage (Fast Food) Jobs have ALWAYS been mostly Part Time Opportunities.
It has little or NOTHING TO DO with the ACA .. As this trend has been happening for Decades now.. LONG BEFORE anyone even had their first thoughts about Health Care Reform..
This issue Dates back to the REAGAN Era.. when the House of Cards was Created.. and Unions among other Avenues for Low and Middle Wage earners to Have a say in the System were Attacked Mercilessly from the Right.
It is just that now the False House of Cards can no longer be sustained.. In LArge part because of the Greed of CEO's and other Executives.. CEO's , Executives, and Corporations that are paying less and giving less hours.. IN SPITE of their Pay having gone up by the largest amount since the Gilded Age.. And their Profits being at RECORD Levels.
GREED AT THE TOP is the Problem.. Not the Boogie man you call the ACA.
Look to Conservative Economic Policies for the Primary Cause of this Problem.. THNINGS JUST DO NOT TRICKLE DOWN.. THEY ALWAYS TRICKLE UP.
This is not the ACA Boogie Man that is the Problem..
As CEO's and Executives make more than they EVER HAVE.. Regular Workers are seeing their Wages Stagnate and Drop.. their Hours Cut. GREED can be the ONLY Explanation for this Phenomenon. One should look to the Conservative Policies that say Bosses are Benevolent.. That Markets will work themselves out.. that Companies will do 'Right by the Employee'.. It as one can CLEARLY see has not worked as the Lower and Middle Class of this Country see their Wages Stagnate and Drop.
These two variables of the equation are not mutually exclusive; the ACA could very well be a salient influence in conjunction with the skewed distribution of wealth. "Both / And" not "Either / Or"
Part time vs full time is different than overtime. And the democrat idea of "fairness" would support 3 people sharing 1 job and 1 decent salary.
Sure, the people at the top are greedy, but they always have been. The government, however, has recently seen an unprecedented increase in beurocracy, incompetence, and paralyzingly the poor with taxes.
Ah, there's the rub, Eureka!! The coalescing of power by the few for the few at the expense of the many. Some would purport that the ACA is part of the consolidation of control factors by the oligarchy of Corporatist Government…
Now what? Order an iPhone 6 PLUS with zero interest for 12 months? Pay into the bloated tax base with its forever-war (not to mention the 4ever wars on poverty, drugs, poor education, all ineffective efforts that cost BIG money)?
Let’s create bigger and more intrusive bureaucracies; that will do it, it always hasn’t before! Still lots of poor people, drug use and ignorant people (many with degrees but can't reason anything other than sophistic innanities because critical reasoning is no longer taught; no dialectic, only relativism).
Acquire an overpriced education and then pay for it while underemployed? Vote for one’s political party as both sides play the middle (class)? Watch the talking heads on one’s subscribed media to tell each faction the “what, where, when and how” is the source of the problem as nothing really improves?
Kabuki.
when partisans like you realize both parties have sold people out the country may have s chance. i won't hold my breath.
"Greed can be the only explanation?" Only in your opinion. I personally know of many college aged kids that have had hours dropped to part time due to Obamanocare. Companies are trying to make it right now. There may be some at the top who are greedy, but that has nothing to do with the huge cut in full time jobs and huge increase in part time. My son and many he knows are working for companies where they had 35 hours a week to work and have been cut back to under 30, and they would find out that more part timers were hired. It is totally about the ACA, whether or not you want to believe it.
And then they blame the businesses for moving headquarters overseas. I'm sorry, if I owned a business I wouldn't want to pay the highest corporate tax rate in the world either.
Ha! How many corporations actually pay those rates? If they did, we would never have a deficit. You must be smoking the good stuff in CO!
In NY, they have lost so many businesses that they are offering no taxes for 10 years for new businesses coming in. Is it ok if a liberal state does that?
You're losing businesses because you can go to China and dump anything you want in the river and pay everyone $2/a day. I think you should pack your crap and move there!
Your wrong... So wrong. Even if every company paid their full tax at the full tax rate, our deficit would be alive and kicking. Why are you so soft on politicians who spend too much of other people's money? Is all government spending needed and important? Do you think there is no consequences for out control debt financed government spending? There is. And our kids will bare the worst of it. For now enjoy the government created prosperity.
"Your" wrong? Maybe you need a trip back to 3rd grade English? Anyway, it doesn't matter who was in office during the Great Recession, nobody was going to do any spending cuts, doesn't matter who is in office because every sane economist on the planet knows that we'd all still be in soup lines right now if they had. The drop in revenue was enormous....those deficits were simply unavoidable, unless you did a massive cut in military spending (Not going to happen, political suicide) or you starve grandma and grandpa (Not going to happen, political suicide) . Have you ever seen the breakdown in a Federal budget anytime in the last 30 years? Obviously you have not. Annualized spending increases are the lowest under Obama than any president since Eisenhower, period. We lose over $150 billion every year to tax dodging corporations alone, here you go Corporate tax rates are near their 60-year low, even though profits are at a 60-year high!
i'd be willing to bet a lot that you dodge taxes just like the corporations you rail against. or maybe you don't know the meaning of tax dodging. i'll give you a hint: the words illegal and legal are part of the definition. now, go ahead and attack the fact i don't capitalize.
Go back to JR high....
oh my how original. guess that's the thing to do when you can't respond to a post intelligently
And the rest of the world is green with envy
In other news the ISIS is still cutting off Christians heads.
When you invade a country for senseless reasons and kill over 100K innocent civilians, spending trillions to do it, not to mention putting your own people in harms way.....then, yes, there will be groups retaliating.
So to retaliate against us they behead their fellow countrymen? You give them too much credit. They are savage radicals.
Wow! You don't think this is a religious war? Might want to move from under your rock.....
You don't get it. This is not retaliation for people like that. This is their way of life, and it doesn't matter if we "bother them" or not, they want to kill us. You want to make nice with them and you think that will make us safe. You can't reason with people like that.
Why do you think they want to kill us? Look at Iraq, there's your answer! What a power vacuum we have created, thanks Dick, W, Rummy, brilliant!
Good article.
We are 5-6 years into our jobless recovery. And even this tepid recovery shows signs of stalling
The combination of Outsourcing, Automation, and Illegal Immigration have decimated the working class and working poor, with no end in sight. Wages can't rise with these headwinds... and if they did then the Fed would immediately raise interest rates to ward off the "wage price spiral" crushing wages again. They think it's ok for Stocks to jump out of control... but wage raises for the plebes is unacceptable
Everybody I know is either out of work or under-employed. I haven’t had a raise in years despite all my expenses increasing from year to year. My health insurance is now up to $400/month. Before the government touched it, it was $250/month! My auto insurance, which the government has yet to ruin, is thankfully only $25/month (from Insurance Panda). Please, Obama! Don’t try to socialize auto insurance!
We need a drop in REAL unemployment and increased WAGES, and should focus on those.
Maybe you should add to your skill set to get a better job! Health insurance rates have been rising an average of over 6% a year for the past 20 years, nice try though!
I don't know what planet you live on. Do you realize how many college educated people there are with multiple degrees and skill sets that can't find a job? at least not a full time one? College aged young adults are feeling the effects of Obamacare. And why are health care costs rising? Maybe it has something to do with liberals wanting everyone in the world to come here illegally and have free health care. So much of that is happening now that the ones who are actually paying for it are unable to afford it anymore, even with insurance, and yes, even with Obamanocare.
Turn off the AM radio for a few weeks Phyllis, and take a mental shower. Wow, healthcare rates increasing, like they have for every year for the past 30 years!? Obama's fault! I personally don't know anyone unemployed and I know a crapload of people, most are highly skilled and educated.
maybe you should go for a math refresher. let me help. 400-250=150. 150/250=.6. .6x100=60%. you're welcome
You're assuming she's telling the truth, highly inplausable!
Tell me Maggie, what jobs do illegal immigrants take from Americans that are so great? What's that? Making tacos used to pay high wages? Well it doesn't anymore. Either does mowing lawns. If your jobs skills are on par with a dirty stinky Mexican, you have a problem. But for everybody else, non issue.
PS stop spamming us with insurance panda promos. It's out of control.
So, the participation rate has been dropping steadily for 15 years....how do you explain this as some kind of recent phenomena? U-6 UE rate rarely falls below 8% in the best of times. This is doomsday BS!
The real story:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-03/labor-participation-rate-drops-36-year-low-record-926-million-americans-not-labor-fo
6 years ago....As Bush was preparing to leave office in early 2009....
1. the DOW had fallen to 8000 and
2. the NASDAQ had plunged to 1500.
3. The average American with a 401K lost about half of their retirement savings.
4. Banks that had survived the Great Depression were going out of business,
5. Housing prices were falling like a rock as the bubble burst,
6. The unemployment rate was 7.8%...and heading up. In the same month that
Bush handed over the economy to Obama, 818,000 workers lost their jobs.
7. The US auto industry was on it's knees begging for a bailout.
8. The Bush administration had to borrow 700 billion dollars from the taxpayers to bail out the banks.
9. In the 4th quarter of 2008...3 weeks before the flickering torch was
passed from Republican to Democrat the US economy contracted a whopping
8.9%...the worst in postwar history.
And where are we NOW...6 years later?
Full time, part time? Does it matter? Back in 2008 we were hemorrhaging jobs...almost 1 million a month.
Just be thankful we are not back in Dec. 2008 when Bush was passing a near brain dead economy to Obama
Some people can never be happy...even with good news
I guess if you skew numbers enough, you can make something look positive no matter how bad it is with this administration. Lies. Nothing but.
I notice you didn't respond to a single statistic I quoted.
The silence is deafening
You still don't get it. Your statistics are flawed, so I don't care what your skewed statistics tell you. It's BS.
Phyllis
Which statistic are you referring to?
The DOW in Dec. 2008
The NASDAQ in Dec. 2008
The loss of value in the average 401K in Dec. 2008
The 4th quarter 8.9% plunge in GDP in Dec. 2008
The 700 billion dollar bank bailout
The Auto Industry ?
The 7.8% unemployment rate in Dec. 2008??
Come on...give me a figure that you dispute and let's do some research to see if my statements are manufactured OR fact.
Phyllis is simply a drone without the ability to do critical thinking.....
Obviously, I believe that you are the one lacking in critical thinking skills. I have long ago learned that there is no reasoning with terrorists and people like you. You're going to believe what you want, and taut your lies and skewed statistics as "proof". Go ahead.
Newsflash for you.
The national debt was over 5 trillion dollars when Bush came in office 2001. When he left it was 11 trillion dollars when Obama came in office 2009. Now under Obama it's over 15 trillion dollars and still rising. By the time he leave the office beginning of year 2016 there's a chance the debt would be around 25 trillion dollars.
It doesn't matter who running the white house/which party whatever, Jimmy Carter was right in late 1970s when he said we got to stop spending beyond our means included the government. All this debt problem started to go over board in the beginning of the 1970s and now it's worst. There are a lot of young unemployed people between the age of 19-25 that rate stand at 14%. The real unemployment rate over all for all age group is four times the 6% that was reported recently. People who graduated from colleges can't even find a job for what they trained/learned for. Some of those same people are now working in part time jobs.....fast foods/restaurants and retails. Onward to big companies/corporations, many of them are paying the tax on what they made a year not what they got saved like in stocks/bonds/hedge funds which runs in the billions.
Example, If a person is worth $30 billion they're not paying a large tax on that, (middle class pay more!) but their company's network a year make $3 billions and they pay tax on that. It may not make sense to some people but that's how it really is, ask billionaire Warren Buffet about that. He pay less tax on his income than his secretary who make less than $50,000 a year.
The real truth is the economy been brain dead for over 30 years!!!
Of course. Obama calculated correctly that the only way to dig this country out of the worst Recession in US history was to stimulate the economy. If you will recall in 2008-09 the entire country, including the auto . housing and banking industry were in collapse. Banks that had existed for over 150 years were disappearing. The auto industry was in danger of becoming extinct. And housing, well...we all know where housing was in 2008-9
Obama figured that the only entity capable of proping up the economy was a huge infusion of federal dollars to building roads, bridges, highways and infrastructure.
And guess what happened???
In 6 years the economy went from THE WORST RECESSION ON RECORD to the STRONGEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD. ...better than Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, Russia and England.
Why do you think the US dollar is so strong right now in relation to other countries.???
Because right now the US is the only bright spot in the world economically
The U.S. economy showed broad-based gains in a slew of reports released Thursday — from factory activity to home sales — even as fresh data showed China and the eurozone sputtering.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve's regional manufacturing index nearly doubled in November to 40.8, the highest since the end of 1993. The new orders subindex also hit a long-time high, while the jobs gauge
climbed to the best in three years.
Existing-home sales rose 1.5% to a better-than-expected 5.26 million annualized, the National Association of Realtors said. That was the sixth gain in seven months and the highest level since September 2013.
Home prices fell for a fourth straight month, but the annual increase firmed up as inventory declined.
Your children may have to pay for some of the money Obama poured into public works....but the highways, roads and bridges they would have had to build are now BUILT...and we are all benefiting from their use.
Obama didn't asked to inherit the worst economy since the Great Depression. It was handed to him by the Bush Administration.
But he took it anyway...and turned it around in under 6 years.
THE WORST RECESSION IN US HISTORY IS OVER.
(It' took 15 years to climb out of the Great Depression)
Guess you didn't read the recent news that the jobs' reports are wrong and the fact a few countries are dumping our dollars. Do you understand what that means? If every countries in the world do that, the economy will crash here not to mention the trillions that is owed will be much bigger than it is.
Bush was in office the unemployment rate was 8% it is now down to
5.9%. Stock market almost 18000 thru the roof. But still the neo-cons are crying
because President Obama has beaten them like a rented mule. Over 10 million people on Obama care. Try to take that away. Conservatives are the bottom of the barrel Americans.
Obama owns your racist ass.
Racist, racist, racist. It has to be that if we disagree, we are racist. It couldn't POSSIBLY be that we believe that these socialist policies are ruining our country, and we don't like it.
Rich Baris is married to a pig. shut up and do some honest reporting.
stop the spin.
Sounds like you are the pig.
good article