Earnings growth continues lag well behind the pace of gains posted at similar stages of the last two expansions. Worse, the rise in earnings appears to be mostly the result of people working more hours rather than getting paid more per hour of work. Subscribe now!

While the pace of month-to-month gains in hiring has become more volatile of late, this indicator of our position in the business cycle still suggests we are some distance away from the next business cycle peak. Subscribe now!

Manufacturing employment growth, which had been slowing since last October, turned negative in March. Whether this is a temporary phenomenon such as the lulls we have seen in this sector several times earlier in this expansion or the beginning of something more ominous remains to be seen. Still at issue is what effects the changes […]

Total employment gains in the first quarter of 2019 were significantly less than those of the first quarter of 2018. And the task of matching last year’s gains only becomes more difficult as we move into the second quarter. Subscribe now!

While the latest gain in total payroll suggests a rebound from the February lull, the details of the report indicate that employment gains are becoming unevenly distributed across the economy. Such a configuration is common as we transition into the Boom phase of the expansion. Subscribe now!

Hiring in the trucking sector was little changed. The details that we need to figure out whether this is anything other than one of the small month-to-month changes so often seen on this chart won’t be available for at least a month. And, by that time, there could have been other changes in the February […]

This series is a great favorite among those of us who follow the jobs numbers because it has shown itself to be a leading indicator of overall employment. And that characteristic comes from the fact that this series usually makes both its cycle highs and cycle lows ahead of total payroll employment. Based on the […]

The gains you see here over the past five months square up nicely with what we have been reading about the building of business inventories. This is where the inventories first get processed. And, we know from looking at some of the trade data, that imports of both consumer and industrial goods accelerated in the […]

This chart is one of the reasons the headline numbers for January and February look the way they do. The drop in employment in February included every category in the construction sector. Construction of buildings was down 4,600. Heavy construction was down 13,200. Specialty trade contractors (the people who work inside to finish structures) was […]

These numbers are harder to read, mostly because they are subject to major revisions. The total change you see on the chart was the result of another bunch of small ups and downs combining, in this case, to a small up. The question now, as it was at this time last year when we saw […]