Retail employment was down 6,100 mainly because Health and Personal care stores, who employ 1,048,000 of the 15,826,600 people who work in retail, shed 11,700 jobs. Department stores, who employ 1,133,200 people, shed 9,000 jobs. That combined decline was largely offset by a bunch (used it again) of small gains and losses in the rest […]

Health care looks to have reverted to the mean in February following large gains in both December and January. I don’t read this as a sign of weakness. Employment at ambulatory health care services was up 15,500. The gain for the sector as a whole was 22,500. Health care employment has been up in the […]

In January, paced by large gains in arts, entertainment and recreation, this series added an upwardly revised 89,000 jobs to total payrolls. In February, paced by a small decline in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector that was perfectly offset by a gain in the accommodation and food services category, the net change was zero. […]

Last year, we had a very strong report in February for pretty much the same reasons we had a strong report this January. Everything went in the same direction. And, as you see on the chart, February was the outlier. But we did not know that for sure until much later. The question will be […]

The February job report is a perfect example of why the National Bureau of Economic Research [NBER] waits at least six months before using the employment data to date a business cycle event. Total Nonfarm Payrolls is one of the four coincident indicators that the NBER uses to make its determination of whether or not […]

This statistic compares the number of people who lose their jobs in a given month to those who leave their jobs during that same month. The ratio goes down over the course of the expansion both because fewer lose their jobs as employment conditions improve and because more people voluntarily leave their jobs as employment conditions improve. This statistic makes its bottom before the end […]

The drop we see here has mostly to do with the seasonal nature of a lot of the work in the category. The end of retail shopping season is the major cause of the decline. The trend remains intact. In case you were wondering, the Bureau of Labor Statistics under this definition to create these figures. “Persons who usually work part-time for non-economic […]

As the economy began to slow over the course of 2007, the number of persons reporting that they were working part-time because of slack work increased. This is what is supposed to happen at the start of a recession. Once the recession took hold, the pace at which people reported having to slack work conditions increased sharply. Subscribe now!

Slack Work is the largest component of Part-Time Employment for Economic Reasons. As you see here, the number has been little changed since early 2017. The question now is whether the spike we see in January is due to the adjustments that are made to the January numbers every year or whether it is a harbinger of something more ominous. Slack work is the […]