Reclaiming Common Sense

Has President Elect Trump Inherited a Jobs Recession?


We saw a surge in Part-time workers while simultaneously saw a decline in full-time jobs during the jobs recession of 2007 through 2010, according to the Current Population Survey (CPS) data.  We saw a slowing in worker creation, according to the Current Employment Statistics  (CES) data. The problem is that since July 2007 we have only added a net 4.9 million total jobs. WE lost 15 million full-time jobs. We recovered 15 million full-time jobs. We finally added 1.4 million full-time jobs this year. We have been shed full-time jobs, non-seasonally adjusted, during September and October of this year while we added part-time jobs. We have added fewer jobs during 2016 than we added during 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015  at the same point in the year.


Has President Obama Left Donald Trump with the beginning of a Jobs Recession?


The Annual rate of CES Worker Growth has slowed to 1.69%. Two percent appears to be a very manageable rate of worker growth. We saw it exceed 6% during President Reagan's Presidency. We saw it crater to a -6% during the Great Recession. When it dropped under 2% during September of 2000 we had another year until the recession started. When the growth rate dropped below 2% during 2005we saw the start of the housing recession and then 3 years later we saw the start of the Great Recession. We have been attempting to soar above 2.00% since September of 2010


We saw the worst September Full-time job loss month this year, compared to 2014 and 2015. We saw the first full-time October  job loss since October 2013 and approached the same level of CPS full-time job loss that we saw during 2008.


Will we rebound back up above 2% as we did during February 2015? The change in the Presidency will impact the jobs market.  We will have a better handle on the situation after Inauguration Day 2017.