November Jobs Report Thread

There is both good news and bad news buried in the report.

Most often, too much attention is paid to the headline month on month numbers.

1)

2) In year over year terms, total nonfarm payrolls did not increase for the first time since the pandemic. Generally, this is a negative.
3) Under the hood, most of the decline was in the government sector so it makes more sense to look at private payrolls in this context.
4) Private payroll growth continues to increase but the gains are clearly slowing down - this is to be expected.
5) The troubling part of the report was the labor force participation rate which remains stubbornly low.

As @R_Perli highlighted, if the LFPR does not increase back to pre-COVID levels, we're going to struggle with weaker trend potential growth.

https://t.co/zw7fCZ2gfY
6) These long-term trends are already quite troubling.
7) Similarly, the employment to population ratio is a disaster and will also weigh on both wage inflation and trend potential growth.

This is a structural issue and not totally related to demographics either.
8) Permanent job losses are still increasing, but slower which is good.
9) The growth rate in weekly hours for the manufacturing sector dipped slightly. Still a positive trend.
10) Coupled with a rising growth rate in the ISM new orders to inventory spread, manufacturing likely has legs through the new year and possibly through Q1.
11) Like @GreekFire23 wrote, after a major recession we get a snapback (Zarnowitz Rule) but growth quickly reverts to trend after the rebound.

https://t.co/Lxn4g7VyLh
12) The problem is that our trend is not good & getting worse

We have a growth upturn at the moment so we can ignore the LT trend, but only temporarily.

End.
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