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Friday, June 2, 2017

Disenchantment in jobs growth

The May 2017 labor report was 138,000 jobs gained (on the establishment survey, and -48,000 jobs lost on the household survey!)  And while this may appear to some to be just a step down from normally great growth numbers, that line of thinking would only be recent-data bias kicking-in.  The overall numbers have been smartly coming down for a few years now, and puts 3% or higher GDP at extraordinary risk.  See the monthly raw data for the establishment survey, with >225,000 jobs months highlighted.  One can clearly see that while this high jobs growth level used to be the norm in about 2014, now such level of monthly job gains are fewer and far between.  Additionally, the kick down to ever-lower disappointment months have recently been treated as transient anomalies, but in fact are becoming the poor new normal that we can expect.
 
 
Simply taking the monthly jobs data and showing what the average is, per year, we can see the disconcerting steady slide lower (and it's the identical pattern for the household survey that is shown in gold color).  This slippery slide in labor data is too robust for President Trump’s pro-growth policies to completely overcome.  And the labor data evidences an economy that is rapidly decelerating to a much slower growth pace.  One would also expect market shocks accordingly, as these labor numbers continue to disappoint.
 

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