From Oct. 3 NYT “TheUpshot” Blog by Neil Irwin:
Remember a month ago, when a crummy August jobs report raised some questions about just how robust the labor market recovery truly was? Never mind.
The September numbers are in, the last to be reported before midterm elections, and they show a job market that is recovering steadily but surely, with the unemployment rate falling below 6 percent for the first time since July 2008. And a solid 248,000 net new jobs were created.
But what are the finer details of the report telling us about the state of the American labor market? While the overall thrust of the report is unquestionably positive, there are some signs of continued weakness buried in the Labor Department numbers that give some reason for pause.
But first, the good news. The 248,000 gain in September payroll employment is part of a bigger trend over the last year, in which payroll gains have taken a decisive shift upward. You can see the shift in the chart of year-over-year job gains.
Over the course of 2014, the trend has risen from around 2.1 million net new jobs a year to 2.6 million as of September, the strongest since April 2006. That may be the single most important number to know to understand what people are talking about when they discuss the acceleration of American job creation.
So what about that unemployment rate? Crossing below the 6 percent threshold to 5.9 percent is surely a talking point we will hear from Democratic candidates in the remaining weeks of this election cycle, and there is no question it is good news.
And many of the internal details that are part of that decline in the unemployment rate are good, too. In September, 232,000 more people reported being employed and 329,000 fewer people reported being unemployed.
But here’s the less rosy sign of the report. The improving job market does not seem to be pulling people who left the labor force over the last few years back into it. In fact the size of the labor force actually ticked down by 97,000 in September, which in and of itself is too small a number in too volatile a series to make much of, but is part of a longer trend of the size of the labor force holding steady rather than increasing.
Read the entire article and see the graphics here.