American Job Market: Fill In The Superlative Of Your Choice

It’s time again for what has become a monthly ritual: the Bureau of Labor Statistics releasing an eye-opening jobs report followed by widespread reactions of surprise, astonishment, and awe.

Then there are those of us who are not surprised, me included, as you know if you’ve been reading my posts over the last three years.

Here we go again.

A Wow! But it should be no surprise

The January Jobs Report, released Friday, February 2 by the BLS, elicited reactions such as stunning, remarkable, and stronger than expected. The economy added 353,000 jobs in January, a towering figure by any measure, and all the more impressive when considering all those seasonal workers whose short-term gigs came to an end last month. Even more so, when consensus expectations were at 176,500. (By now, they should really know better.)

Not only that, but December’s figures were revised upward by 117,000 to 333,000 and November’s figures by 9,000 to 182,000. All in, with January’s numbers added to the revisions, we’re sitting on 479,000 added jobs we didn’t know about a day earlier. Further, the unemployment rate remained at 3.7% for the third consecutive month and under 4% for the 24^th consecutive month.

Beneath the surface

Those are the headline numbers. They’re results, not reasons. So a deeper dive will tell us things that should preclude this monthly collective surprise. We have, in essence, a job market that’s working exactly the way it should. For instance, the civilian labor force, participation rate, number of employed, and number of unemployed are all moving in sync, displaying a beautifully harmonic, homeostatic state wherein those who are entering or re-entering the job market are finding a hospitable environment.

Where were jobs created?

Professional and business services added 74,000 jobs, health care added 70,000, retail trade added 45,000, government added 36,000, social assistance added 30,000, manufacturing added 23,000, an information services added 15,000. Little change was seen in other industries. That’s extremely widespread gains .A rising tide has, indeed, been lifting all ships.

Wages

While all this job creation is going on, it would be rendered moot if wages were stagnant or falling. But just the opposite continues to happen. Wages, now 4.5% up from last year, outpace inflation, which has come down to where the rate of decline, taken holistically, leads the world. And the GDP has grown by a better-than-expected 3.3%.

JOLTS

A day earlier, the BLS released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which lags the Jobs Report by a month. That notwithstanding, it, too, was a great report. In a nutshell, we see more harmony here, too. A 5.4% open jobs rate yields 9 million open jobs. The latest hiring rate of 3.6% is strong, considering the full employment level of under 4.0% unemployment for the past 24 months. The latest separations rate of 3.4% indicates a solid and secure market, while the voluntary quits rate continues to exhibit confidence in the market. Finally, the layoffs rate remains historically low at 1.0%.

Taken as a whole, this job market (a) should no longer be a surprise to anyone, and (b) deserves any and all superlatives it garners.

A masterpiece

“Masterpiece” comes to mind. Like, for instance, Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer” or Rosa Bonheur’s “The Horse Fair.” Check them out and see if my superlative makes sense.

This is a masterpiece of a job market.