By FRANK STRICKER January 16, 2023 On January 6, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued its report on jobs and unemployment for December of last year. Some parts of that report were surprisingly strong, given that the Federal Reserve has been working for months to push unemployment up and weaken demand for labor. Pretty… Read More The December Jobs Report: A Mixed Bag
By FRANK STRICKER December 19, 2022 The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey of households in November found that the official unemployment rate stayed at 3.7%. That’s low by conventional standards and lower than 4 to 5%, which is probably what the Federal Reserve is aiming for. Official unemployment rates for some groups stayed down.… Read More Who Did Well and Who Did Not? November 2022 Jobs Report Analysis
By Frank Stricker November 25, 2022 Employment and Unemployment The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) employment report for October was a mixed bag. The unemployment rate rose by 0.2% to 3.7% and there were 306,000 more unemployed people than in September. A rate of 3.7% is far from full employment. When one adds people who want… Read More Jobs: And the Beat Goes On for Now (October 2022 Labor Market Analysis)
By FRANK STRICKER In the poverty report for 2021, released on September 13, there was some good news. The official poverty rate stood at 11.6% of the population. That was essentially the same as the rate (11.5%) in 2020. Amazingly, it was just a little higher than in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. So poverty… Read More The Poverty Numbers in 2021: Is There A Better Way to Count Poverty?
By FRANK STRICKER So where the heck are we on the job front? The Bureau of Labor Statistics report on employment in August included contradictory information. Payroll job totals of government and non-farm business employers showed an increase of 315,000 jobs. Yet in the household survey unemployment increased by two tenths of a percentage point… Read More The Confusing Job Situation in August 2022
