by Risk calculated on 07/10/2022 09:40:00
The overall employment count in the September jobs report was slightly above expectations, and employment for the previous two months was revised up by 11,000, combined. The participation rate has fallen, causing the unemployment rate to fall to 3.5%, which is equivalent to lowest unemployment rate since 1969! And the employment-to-population ratio remained unchanged.
Leisure and hospitality gained 83,000 jobs in September. At the start of the pandemic, in March and April 2020, leisure and hospitality lost 8.20 million jobs and is now down 1.14 million jobs since February 2020. Thus, leisure and hospitality hospitality industry have now recovered approximately 86% of all lost jobs. in March and April 2020.
Construction employment rose by 19,000 and now stands 95,000 above pre-pandemic levels.
Manufacturing added 22,000 jobs and is now 163,000 above pre-pandemic levels.
Education: As expected, fewer educators than usual were hired in September, leading to a seasonally adjusted loss of 29,000 teaching jobs.
In September, the year-over-year employment change was 5.69 million jobs.
Participation Prime (25 to 54 years old)
Given that the overall labor force participation rate has declined due to cyclical (recession) and demographic (aging population, young people continuing their education) reasons, here is the employment-to-population ratio for the key working age group: 25 to 54 year.
The participation rate for those aged 25 to 54 fell in September to 82.7% from 82.8% in August, and the employment-to-population ratio for those aged 25 to 54 fell to 80.2 % compared to 80.3% the previous month.
Part-time for economic reasons
From BLS report:
“The number of people employed part-time for economic reasons fell by 306,000 to 3.8 million in September. These people, who would have preferred full-time employment, worked part-time because their hours had been reduced or they could not find full-time employment.“
The number of people working part-time for economic reasons fell in September to 3.843 million from 4.149 million in August. This is below pre-recession levels.
These workers are included in the alternative measure labor underutilization (U-6) which decreased to 6.7% from 7.0% the previous month. This is down from April’s all-time high of 22.9% and is the lowest level on record for this metric since 1994. This metric is lower than the February 2020 (pre-pandemic) level.
Unemployment for more than 26 weeks
This graph shows the number of workers who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more.
According to the BLS, 1.067 million workers have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks and still want a job, up from 1.137 million the previous month.
This is returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Summary:
The overall monthly payrolls number was slightly above expectations and employment for the previous two months was revised up by 11,000, combined.
The overall unemployment rate fell to 3.5%.
Overall, this is another strong jobs report.