There’s a lot more to the employment report than just a couple of headline numbers. The last several months proof the value of not overreacting to any one employment report. Especially when we’re already at the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years. Weaker reports might mean that hiring is really slacking off, or it might mean that the labor market is so tight it’s hard for employers to hire when they’re looking to do so. Throughout the first half of 2019, when we saw weakness in hiring it was generally the latter. Friday’s employment report, showed a continuation of the first half, with a huge bonus. We’re seeing the long-term unemployed, marginally attached and underemployed receive record opportunity as companies are providing better jobs and opportunities to people in those situations.
First of all, the unemployment rate stayed flat at 3.7% with +130,000 jobs and negative revisions from past months totaling -20,000 jobs. The top industries for hiring were #1 Professional & Business Services, #2 Federal government, and coming in third Healthcare.
There are two important takeaways from this report. First, healthcare has been consistently a leader in hiring. Federal government hiring was due to a ramp-up in Census employees in advance of the 2020 Census. Second, significant revisions continue with the government numbers and are likely to continue given the significant difference in private-sector hiring, nearly 100k, between the ADP report and the government report. Expect positive jobs revisions in future months. The real unemployment rate once underemployed, long-term unemployed and marginally attached people are accounted for is actually 7.2% down from 7.4% in 2018.
Some other takeaways include the real-unemployment rate continuing to decline to near-record low levels, those unaccounted for in the base unemployment rate include 6.7 million Americans and there are only four months in American history with a lower real unemployment rate.
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