This Was Jobs Week. The ADP Payroll Report, Weekly Unemployment Report and Jobs Report were released
The second week of the month is normally "JOLTS Week." This is the week when the Jobs Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report is released and the weekly unemployment claims data is released. The relative dearth of other economic data affords the opportunity to dig further into the jobs data. Some in the media wanted to compare the former President's final 30 months in office with the performance of President Trump after 30 months in office. This column has been making monthly comparisons of the Presidents since month81 of the Obama administration.
.(Aug. 5) The July Jobs Report received a lukewarm response even though we set a record for total jobs and a record level of private sector workers. The workers and wages data has been strong for months on end. This month we set records for hourly wages for the month of July. "July Wages Up, Workers Up, Record Highs" goes into details.
(Aug. 6) Former President Obama wanted to compare his final two years in office with President Trump's first 20 months in office (Did he need the fourth month advantage?) Now people are attempting to compare the first 30 months of President Trump with the final thirty months former President Obama. The article "Five Presidents after 30 months: Most Full-time Jobs Created" uses the Current Population Survey (CPS) jobs and unemployment data to compare the accomplishments of former Presidents Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. Hint: President Trump has almost created as many new full-time jobs after 30 months in office as former President Obama created new over 96 months.
(Aug. 6) The July Jobs Report was released last week. The June JOLTS report was released this week. "June JOLTS Data: Some Surprises" explains that while we did not set a July record for Job Openings this year we did set a July record for Quits. The same for sectors have the most Job Openings, Hiring, Quits, and Total Separations.
(Aug. 7) There is a considerable amount of data in the jobs report that is not addressed very often. The CPS jobs and unemployment data has information on age, race, and gender. There is data on the number of people working multiple jobs. The article "Record July for Men, Women, and Multiple Job Workers" reveals how we have a record level of men working full-time jobs (this has not always been the case,) a record July level of women working jobs (Women recovered from the recession before men did,) and how we set a record level of July Multiple Job workers (8.305 Million.)
(Aug. 8) The weekly unemployment claims report used to be bottom of the hour headline news while the former President was touting consecutive weeks with 300,000 or fewer seasonally adjusted first-time unemployment claims. This week we set the "Weekly Record for the first week of August" when the non-seasonally adjusted first-time unemployment claims number was recorded At just 178,895 claims.
(Aug.9) We were supposed to enter a never ending recession when President Trump was elected. We have had people in the media anticipating a Government Shutdown Recession or a Fourth Rate Hike Recession. Bill Maher has been hoping for a recession to unseat President Trump. That call was renewed this week. The economic data has been better than it has been reported by a large share of the media. The article "Will this be the First Media Created Recession" examines the jobs data, the worker data, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data, the MARTS Retail Sales Data, the New Home Construction, New Home Sales, and Existing Home Sales data. The answer to the question "not if they report on the data instead of the reports."
This week the focus was on the roller coaster called the stock market. Once the Jobs Report is released it normally receives attention for a few hours or one day. The phrase "It's the Economy, Stupid" originated during the 1992 re=election bid of George HW Bush. That election was also famous for the phrase "Read My Lips, No New Taxes." "All" recession are jobs recessions. When people lose jobs they are making less money and spending less money. This economy may be doing better if GDP data and Jobs and Worker data from President Trump wasn't being revised back to the Obama Administration's data.
It's the Economy.